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The Illuminati have ten degrees: seven standard and three mystery degrees. The original degrees were formulated by the first Grand Master of the Illuminati – Pythagoras, the ancient Greek mystic, philosopher and mathematician. His system was based on his cosmological system, which was as much symbolical as real.

Pythagoras was the first man to call himself a philosopher – a lover of wisdom – and he was also the first to declare that the earth wasn’t the centre of the universe. Instead, a mystical central fire (not the sun) was put at the centre of the cosmos, thus making this model a forerunner of the Copernican system. The central fire was referred to as the “House of Abraxas” – and represented, symbolically, the home of the True God, the eternal realm of divine light and warmth.

Ten heavenly bodies revolved around it: the counter-earth (this was identical to the earth and followed the same orbit, but was diametrically opposite, relative to the central fire, and therefore permanently invisible from the earth), the earth itself, the moon, the sun, the five planets known at the time and the sphere of fixed stars of the celestial plain. Beyond, lay infinite space. The heavenly bodies, moving in perfect circular orbits, created the divine sound known as the Music of the Spheres, which permeated the entire universe but could be heard only by the True God.

The Pythagorean Degrees of the Illuminati

Standard degrees

1st: The Heaven of the Fixed Stars.
2nd: Kronos (Saturn). Kronos was the leader of the Titans. (He castrated his father Uranus, thus taking his power from him. He ruled the world during the mythological Golden Age. He was the father of the Olympian gods. He was overthrown by his son Zeus, and he and the other Titans were bound in the underworld.)
3rd: Zeus (Jupiter, Jove). The king of the Olympian gods.
4th: Ares (Mars). The god of war.
5th: Helios (Sol). The sun.
6th: Aphrodite (Venus). The goddess of love and beauty.
7th: Hermes (Mercury). The messenger of the gods.

Antichthon is the highest degree because it represents the opportunity for humanity to transform itself beyond recognition. While this earth is corrupt, wicked and fallen, the counter-earth offers the promise of the complete opposite: paradise, free of the malignant influence of the Demiurge and the Old World Order. Antichthon, the counter-earth, is what the earth can and should be.

The Mithraic Degrees of the Illuminati

In later times, the Greek Pythagorean degrees were restyled according to a Roman system. The seven standard degrees became those of Mithraism, a mystery religion closely related to Illumination:

Standard degrees

1st: Corax (the Raven), under the rule of Mercury.
2nd: Nymphus (the Bride), under the rule of Venus.
3rd: Miles (the Soldier), under the rule of Mars.
4th: Leo (the Lion), under the rule of Jupiter.
5th: Perses (the Persian), under the rule of the Moon.
6th: Heliodromus (the Sun Runner), under the rule of the Sun.
7th: Pater (the Father), under the rule of Saturn.

The Mystery Degrees

8th: Minerva (symbolised by an owl – the Owl of Minerva).
9th: Magus (symbolised by the phoenix, the sacred firebird that rises from the ashes).
10th: Deus Absconditus (the Hidden God, Abraxas, symbolised by the Tetraktys).

(The last of the four major Illuminati symbols is the skull and crossbones in honour of Simon Magus. The Greek Sphinx also has special significance.)

These remain the degrees of the Illuminati. The majority of members belong to the standard degrees; the 10th degree is for the 12 members of the Ruling Council only. The identities of the Ruling Council are completely unknown to the basic membership, but at each initiation, one masked member of the Ruling Council is always in attendance and conducts the final part of the ceremony.

There were ten degrees in total because, for Pythagoras, the number 10 was divine. 1, 2, 3 and 4 were also revered because they add up to 10 and they form the divine triangle – the Tetraktys – which symbolized the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and, in its totality, also the mystical fifth essence, the Quintessence.

The Tetraktys is:

It is an equilateral triangle composed of dots in four rows, a visual representation of the equation: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10. The Tetraktys contains a hexagon and a three-dimensional cube, as shown in the picture. It is a truly extraordinary figure. It also symbolises key musical intervals: 4:3 (the fourth), 3:2 (the fifth) and 2:1 (the octave). If the Tetraktys is extended by adding new rows, up to a total of 36, the 36th “triangular” number is 666: the Number of the Beast in the Christian Book of Revelation. The number 36 has a crucial significance for the Illuminati, as does the Tetraktys extended to order 36. As for the 666th triangular number, this is equal to 222111. When two successive “triangular” numbers are added, the result is a square number e.g. 1 + 3 = 4; 3 + 6 = 9; 6 + 10 = 16; 10 +15 = 25.

Pythagoras, First Grand Master of the Illuminati

Pythagoras was born in 570 BCE on the Greek island of Samos. He was taught how to perform miracles by a mystic called Pherecydes, who first introduced him to the doctrines of the Illuminati. (At this time, the Illuminati did not exist as a formal organisation, but as a loose group of nomadic thinkers and mystics.) Pherecydes instructed Pythagoras on the immortality and transmigration of the human soul, the soul’s wanderings in the “underworld”, and the purpose of the soul’s cycle of reincarnations.

Pherecydes recommended Pythagoras to other members of the Illuminati, amongst whom were Egyptian priests, the most illustrious and learned of teachers in those times. When Pherecydes died, Pythagoras boarded ship and went to Egypt where he was taught secret knowledge, profound mysteries and advanced mathematics by the priests at Heliopolis, Memphis and Thebes. Later, he learned astronomy from the Chaldeans, geometry from the Phoenicians and occult knowledge from the Persian Magi. He also met the prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster) in Persia. On his travels, he acquired all of the greatest wisdom then available in the world. He was uncontaminated by Judaism, and, as for Christianity and Islam, they did not exist at this time. For people nowadays, it’s easy to forget that there was a time when people did not suffer from the warped mindset of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The world was once free of these horrific religions, and it can be again. According to Christianity, every human being went to hell before the coming of the “Redeemer”, Jesus Christ. If he had never come, the whole of humanity would have been condemned to hell. What sort of religion contemplates sending everyone to eternal perdition?

In Croton in southern Italy, Pythagoras founded a school where he taught the secret knowledge he had acquired. Here, the Illuminati first took shape as a formal organisation, with Pythagoras as the first Grand Master. He and the newly initiated members of the Illuminati lived in a community where everything was held in common. There was no private property. Brotherly cooperation was emphasised.

Pythagoras addressed the Illuminati from behind a curtain, so none could see him. Only those who had graduated to the mystery degrees of the Illuminati were admitted into his presence. Those who had attained the mystery grades, the inner circle, were called mathematikoi – the mathematicians – while the outer circle were called the akousmatikoi (“listeners”).

Pythagoras developed a secret language (still used by the senior members of the Illuminati), and elaborate numerical codes and symbolic messages. He devised initiation rites and introduced secret symbols and special handshakes. Compasses and set squares, tools of mathematics, were given high prominence as symbols. All of the trademarks of Masonic lodges were already evident here. The Illuminati formally created Freemasonry millennia later, based on these original Pythagorean innovations.

His students considered Pythagoras supernatural and a demigod. They said, “There are in the universe men and gods and beings like Pythagoras.” A biographer called him the “harmonic deity, halfway between gods and men.” (The idea of individuals ascending the scale between humanity and divinity is critical to the Illuminati.)

The Italian city of Sybaris was legendary for the opulence and luxury enjoyed by its citizens. This was an Old World Order city par excellence. Pythagoras condemned it as a lazy, corrupt, materialistic society, heedless of the poor, dedicated to making money and contemptuous of philosophy and ideas. The Crotons, rivals of Sybaris, attacked it and destroyed it.

The Illuminati grew increasingly more influential, but when a man called Chion, a person of “high birth” (i.e. a member of the Old World Order) was refused admission to the Order, he and a gang of thugs burned down the Illuminati’s headquarters, killing most of the initiates. Pythagoras escaped, but was pursued, caught and put to death.

Pythagoras is one of the most brilliant and mysterious men in history. He was the first to attempt to bring together reason, mathematics and mysticism, subjects that have preoccupied the Illuminati ever since. One of the treasures of the Illuminati, only ever accessed by the Ruling Council, is an ancient manuscript by Pythagoras. As far as the wider world is concerned, he never wrote anything down.

He considered numbers to be the arche, the most fundamental element of the universe, the true nature of things. Although this sounds like an eccentric idea, no one can doubt that mathematics is deeply embedded in the fabric of the universe. If the universe was not mathematical it would be impossible to make any sense of it. Mathematics is the language of order and patterns. When equations are solved, numbers are what are produced.

In the “clockwork” universe of Laplace, if the positions and motion of every particle in the universe could be determined at one time then all future positions and motions could be calculated. In this sense, the universe could be characterised as a vast matrix of ever-changing numbers describing the dynamical positions of every particle (being moved around by the forces operating on them). The introduction of quantum uncertainty simply changes the complexity of the matrix, but not the underlying numerical basis of this vision of reality. If the universe can be described on a moment to moment basis as an enormous matrix of numbers describing all possible positions of all possible particles, and all the experiences of humanity are coded in those numbers, then Pythagoras’s statement is not as strange as it initially sounds to many people. The movie The Matrix famously showed “reality” as huge arrays of numbers and symbols – machine code – cascading down computer screens, which then had to be translated into the reality with which we are familiar. After a while, this translation became automatic for those looking at the screens. This would have been an image that would instantly have appealed to Pythagoras, except he may have regarded the screens of numbers and symbols as more real than the images of real life derived from them. The code would be the arche, while the decoded images would be secondary and derived, hence less real.

Pythagoras was the person most responsible for the numerology that features heavily in occult thinking. He condemned the visible world – the creation of the Demiurge – as false and illusory. In the classic language of Gnosticism, he said that the heavenly light was broken and obscured in mist and darkness. He had many characteristics in common with St Francis; a love of poverty, despair at the behaviour of privileged elites, and a desire for brotherhood. He was even said to talk to animals, just like St Francis. Men and women were admitted into the Illuminati on equal terms, an exceptional occurrence in those times.

Bertrand Russell said that the vast majority of Plato’s philosophy had its roots in Pythagoreanism. Given the impact of Plato on the western world, this shows how important Pythagoras was. He could justly be considered the most influential of all western philosophers. The great tragedy for the world was that it strayed away from Pythagoras, Gnosticism and the Illuminati and instead embraced the evil and idiotic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, plunging us into millennia of horror and despair. But Pythagoras will be reborn, and his message, and that of the Illuminati, will triumph in the end.

Russell says, “The whole conception of an eternal world, revealed to the intellect but not to the senses, is derived from him.”

He was also reputed to have the ability to project messages onto the moon for the world to see. Using his own blood, he would write a message on a looking glass, point it at the moon, and the inscription would appear on the moon’s disc.

Pythagoras is famous for his theorem regarding right-angled triangles, but that is the least of his remarkable achievements. He taught that each number had its own special attributes:

The number pair 220 and 284 were an Illuminati recognition code. 220 and 284 are “amicable” numbers. Two numbers are amicable if each is the sum of the proper divisors (that is all the divisors except the number itself) of the other.

If an Illuminati member showed a talisman bearing the number 220, the correct response was for another member to show a talisman bearing the number 284. This pair of numbers has become significant in magic, sorcery, astrology and the occult.

Other recognition codes were based on so-called Deficient, Perfect and Abundant Numbers. A number is perfect if it is equal to the sum of its proper divisors. 6 is a perfect number (1 + 2 + 3 = 6). A number is deficient if its sum falls short of the number. 8 is deficient (1 + 2 + 4 = 7). A number is abundant if the sum exceeds the number. 12 is abundant (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 6 = 16).

Each degree of the Illuminati was associated with a particular Deficient, Perfect or Abundant number, and could be used by one member to reveal his rank to another.

These are just a few examples of the complex numerology used by the Illuminati.

Revealed Religions Versus Mystery Religions

The major religions of the world are “revealed”. This term has two meanings. One is that God has personally revealed himself to us. A second is that no part of the religion is hidden i.e. the totality of the religion is available to all.

In Christianity, God allegedly became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ and directly communicated his message to us during the years of his ministry. His teachings are recorded in the New Testament. (One wonders why Jesus Christ didn’t bother to write down the precise nature of his religion. Why was he so evasive? Why did he continually resort to strange parables susceptible to multiple interpretations?)

In Judaism, God, in person, allegedly addressed prominent Jews such as Moses and the High Priests. On Mount Sinai, God personally provided Moses with his Ten Commandments and the “oral” Torah i.e. he communicated unmediated with Moses. The words given to Moses were straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. The oral Torah was later written down by Moses – it was completed on the day of his death – to become the sacred text of the Jews. (One wonders why Yahweh didn’t provide a written version of the Torah rather than presenting it orally. Why didn’t he appear to everyone rather than just one person? Why did he choose the Jews for this signal honour of being his “Chosen People”? And what did this say for his attitude to everyone else?)

In Islam, the illiterate tribesman Mohammed encountered the Angel Gabriel in a cave and Gabriel then perfectly dictated the Word of Allah to Mohammed, who perfectly recalled every word when he, in turn, dictated to the scribes who produced the first Koran. (One wonders why Allah didn’t deal with someone who could read and write rather an illiterate peasant. Muslims think this is a great miracle whereas everyone else thinks it is bizarre, incomprehensible and unbelievable. One also must wonder why Allah didn’t provide a holy text directly, rather than using the Angel Gabriel as a dictating machine. And why was Allah so fond of Arabic? Couldn’t he provide a Koran in every language? Not too much effort for the Creator of the universe surely.)

In Hinduism, Avatars of the gods appeared periodically on the earth, but again seemed to have great difficulty in clearly communicating their message.

It is an astounding thing that the “old” religions claim to possess the word of God, directly from God, and yet the Torah, New Testament and Koran are amongst the most ambiguous and least persuasive books on earth. “Lord of the Rings” by JRR Tolkein is more credible and consistent. Only people brainwashed from birth could believe in the nonsense spouted in “holy” texts.

For thousands of years, humanity has had direct access to the “Word of God” and yet no one can agree on what it is, and it has caused endless trouble and violence. Can God not communicate effectively? What sort of God is he in that case? What is for sure is that the earth has become no glorious paradise thanks to the holy words of “God”. Doesn’t the suspicion begin to form that the God of this world has more in common with Satan – exactly as Gnosticism has always taught? It is time to reject the Word of Satan – the Bible, the Torah and the Koran – once and for all.

In Buddhism, there is no God per se, but Buddha himself revealed the entirety of the Buddhist religion. Nothing is hidden from ordinary Buddhists. The trouble with Buddhism is that it simply doesn’t amount to very much of anything.

With “mystery” religions, the situation is entirely different. The complete religion is not revealed to everyone. There are profound secrets, and the promise of startling, life-altering revelations. Those who want to know more must be initiated into the religion, and they may not be permitted to join in the first place. If the initiate desires to know the ultimate secrets of the religion, he must graduate through various degrees, involving increasing complexity and greater and heavier demands on him, to reach the highest level.

Mystery religions do not provide a convenient holy text to all and sundry. Mystery religions do not provide the answers to everyone: the answers must be worked for, and are strictly reserved for those who show most dedication and commitment. Mystery religions involve transcendental ceremonies that often assault the senses in deliberately disturbing ways. Mystery religions take initiates out of their normal selves and ordinary lives, out of their comfort zones, and them plunge them into an arena where epiphanies are possible.

Mystery religions have nothing in common with revealed religions. Mystery religions are about the truth, about ultimate transformation, about opening your eyes to all of the potential of the universe.

Revealed religions, on the contrary, are about old men in beards ordering you to bow and kneel and pray to a God from whom you are entirely alienated. Nothing is more tedious and more soul-destroying, than revealed religion.

Revealed religion is a mockery of true religion. It’s time for humanity to reject revealed religions which have done so much to kill off spirituality and to promote consumerism and materialism.

“What was once done ‘for the love of God’ is now done for the love of money.”

Nietzsche

Only mystery religion can restore humanity’s sense of the divine. Illumination, with an unbroken ancestry in the mystery religions of the past, is the religion that will replace all others.

For more information see Armageddonconspiracy.co.uk and keep returning to this website for updates.

As a young visitor to the British Museum, I was awe-struck by the sight of the great statue in the main entrance, a massive Easter Island statue labelled “Hoa-haka-nana-ia, symbol of the wrath to come”, a stone giant now in the Museum of Mankind. The dire circumstances he portends is cause to ponder. After the Fall of the Roman Empire there arose a belief in the end of the world. Such ideas have been revived in many ages since. Is there an everlasting pattern to which such an event corresponds?

When the so-called Millennium Clock was started last year, a minister said that the Government was looking to the year 2000 as a year of celebration. Some will look to mark the end of a millennium, others to greet the start of the new. Some esotericists held special celebrations around the autumnal equinox five years ago. Vatican astronomers had computed that the Star of Bethlehem was a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, and it was reckoned that the Saviour of the World was born under Libra in 7 BCE, so Christian initiates had their Millennium party in 1993. For cultures not geared to the Gregorian era, these chronological shenanigans have little import. But the significant thing is that each year sees the anniversary of the Birth of the Universe, and the cycle of every year echoes the continuous orgasm of creation.

“For the Cosmos is never bereft of any of the things that are, but is perpetually being conceived and moved within itself, and is in labour to bring forth the things that are” said Hermes Trismegistos to his disciples1. The word “cosmos” means order and beauty, but commonly is taken to signify the solar system and the universe, and sometimes the world. But in the hermetic writings it is the Principle or Idea of all Order by which all things not only proceed from their causes, but by which alone it is possible for them to be manifested, to be held together, to be related or ordinated to each other, and to the end and purpose for which they exist.

Order from Chaos – the Me and Maat

Accounts of the beginning of the world vary according to which cosmogony is followed. According to the records of the earliest civilisations, it was generally assumed that the gods had existed for a very long time, but not forever, and that man was a later arrival on the scene. To express the idea of creation, the Mesopotamians used various images. First the idea of sexual intercourse between the gods. (A Sumerian poem tells how this produced Summer and Winter.) Second, the image of modelling by hand a figurine of clay was used, particularly for the creation of mankind. Finally, the quickening power of the divine utterance is seen as responsible for creation. God is described as undertaking the organisation of the universe, and as accomplishing this solely by the creative power of his word.

The properties or powers of the Gods which enabled all the activities of human life, especially religion, to take place were known by the Sumerian word “me” (pronounced “may”). The term is a plural, inanimate noun, expressing a very basic concept in Sumerian religion. A related tern is “gis-hur” (“plan”, “design”), denoting how these activities ought, ideally, to be: the “me” are the powers which make possible the implementation of the “gis-hur” and which ensure the continuation of civilised life. The are ancient, enduring, holy, valuable. Mostly they are held by the Gods An and Enlil, but they can be assigned or given to other Gods of lesser rank. Some “me” are conceived in very concrete terms – the throne of kingship (symbolising the activity of kingship) or a temple drum (symbolising the performance of ritual music) – and consequently are sometimes said to be “sat on”, “carried”, “worn”. In times of social upheaval the “me” may be “dispersed”, “forgotten” or “gathered together and stood in a corner”. The “me” are comprised of the secret formulae by which the deities exercise their share of the divine power. As a corpus of divine rules they are controlled by Enmesarra, chthonic God of the law.

“The truths contained in religious doctrines are distorted and systematically disguised” wrote Sigmund Freud.2 In seeking to uncover some of the truths disguised under the figures of religion and mythology, we need to read their symbolic language. First we must learn the grammar of symbols, and as a key to this mystery a good tool is astrology, which serves as the Esperanto of the occult. If we permit this as an approach, ancient meanings become apparent. There are differences between the numerous mythologies and religions of mankind, but the diligent will discern similarities and perceive that perennial philosophy that has echoed down the ages in different guises. As we are told in the Vedas: “Truth is one; the sages speak of it by many names.”

The alteration of the seasons, like the phases of the moon, punctuate the rhythm of life and the stages in the cycle of development – birth, growth, maturity and decline. This is applicable to human beings as well as to their societies and civilisations. It symbolises perpetual rebirth. The start of the year is brought in by Aries with the Spring equinox, when day and night are of equal length, but it should be noted that the zodiacal sign of Libra, the Scales, heralds the Autumn equinox when at half-way the year as a whole is in balance. The movements of the Sun in its annual cycle, like those of the scale-pans of Libra, correspond to the relative “weight” of darkness and light. When the pans are in balance (at the equinoxes), the pointer on the scales become the symbol of the changeless “centre”. This connotes with the balance of “yin” and “yang” that gives rise to phenomenal manifestation. Given moral connotations light and darkness correlate with the doctrine of the Cabala that the Universe is perpetuated through the interaction of good and evil. Bringing matter and time and the visible and the invisible into balance was a preoccupation of the alchemists who strove for that knowledge which was “mastery of the scales”; since this knowledge was that of the correspondences between the material and the spiritual universe, between heaven and earth, the key to the very genesis of the cosmos. At creation the disorganised forces of chaos were subdued, the Kings of Edom vanquished, and disorder banished; the delicate balance that is cosmos was achieved and the world was born. Life manifested and the manifold activities of the universe ensued. It behooves all beings to perpetuate that correct order which is the foundation of the world and of life itself. As the prophet said: “Let us choose to us judgement; let us know among ourselves what is good.” (Job 34 v4)

The great regulator of the cosmos is the sun. A cylinder seal from the Akkadian Period shows the Mesopotamian sun-God Shamash as dispenser of divine justice. Before him are held the scales, and he is distinguished by the rays emanating from his shoulders and by his weapon called “shashsharu”, a serrated sword. The scales are the acknowledged symbol of moderation, prudence and balance because their purpose corresponds precisely with the weighing of actions and activities. When associated with the sword, scales symbolise Justice. They are the emblems of administration and duty, and those of kingly power. Extending the foregoing meanings to divine makes the scales the symbol of the Last Judgement. Thus the aegis of divine justice lies with the solar deity.

Having created the world by naming all its parts, the Ancient Egyptian sun-God Re (or Ra) became king of both Gods and men, ruling with his daughter, Maat, at his side. Maat was the personification of Truth and Justice. She was depicted by Egyptian artists as a woman wearing an ostrich plume on her head. A picture of this feature was often used as the hieroglyphic symbol both for her name and for the noun “truth”. The feather was used in the Judgement of the Dead, when it was weighed in a balance against the heart of the deceased person undergoing the Judgement to see if he or she possessed “maat”, that is, had lived life in conformity with truth and justice. The concept of Maat stood for much more than Truth and Justice; it represented the divinely appointed order of things, the equilibrium of the universe within the world, the regular movements of the stars, the sun, the moon, the seasons and the sequence of time. Within the world which Re created according to his divine plan, Maat stood for social and religious order, the relationship between one human being and another, between mankind and the gods, and between mankind and the dead. Kingship, in the person of Re, and Order, in the person of Maat, came to earth at the very beginning. Thus, the creation of the world was synchronous with the creation of kingship and social order. However, chaos was an ever-present threat to the existence of this divinely created order. Only by practising Maat could the Egyptians preserve the harmony of the universe. This belief was the basis of Egyptian religion; and the cult practised in temples was designed to uphold Maat so that Egypt might prosper.

The Emerald Tablet of Hermes says: “As above, so below”, meaning that it is incumbent upon man to live his life on earth in conformity with divine law. The psychostasis, or the weighing of souls, so famous a subject of Ancient Egyptian theology and art, symbolises God’s judgement of the individual with all the individual with all the formidable apparatus of justice. Psychostasis means that no human is insignificant in God’s sight. It symbolises judgement, but, at a deeper level, responsibility as well. Before Osiris and his forty-two assessors, armed with knives, these being the canonical number of sins, stood the scales of judgement, attended by Anubis, holding the dead person’s hand and leading him towards the scales. In his other hand the God holds an ankh, the symbol of the generative forces in the universe, representing the eternal life which the dead person hopes to obtain. Anubis placed the souls of the deceased in the balance against the feature of truth, whilst the record-keeper Thoth inscribed on his palette the result of the weighing.

Thoth, whose ancient name was Tehuti (a toponym from Djhut), was important as a mediator and counsellor amongst the Gods. In some inscriptions he is described as a son of Re. Thoth is generally regarded as benign. His also scrupulously fair and is responsible not only for entering in the record the souls who pass to the afterlife, but of adjudicating in the Hall of the Two Truths, the Hall of Truth and Justice. Those unfortunate souls found wanting in the balance were devoured by the monster Am-mut, part crocodile, part lion, part hippopotamus, the “eater of the dead” whose fearful minds were haunted by images of these wild creatures from beyond the pale. Sorcerers along the Nile painted the symbol of Maat on their tongues to make them “true of voice”. Ordinary people faced dire consequences if they spoke “corruptly”. One Neferalu admitted that he swore a false oath, for which he suffered blindness: “I swore falsely by Ptah, Lord of Maat, therefore he made me see darkness by day.” 3

Divine Order in the Graeco-Roman World

The symbol of the scales was evident in the classical world. Alexander conquered Egypt and the Greeks identified Thoth with their Hermes. A Greek vase depicts Hermes weighing the souls of Achilles and Patrolocus. In Ancient Greece, Themis, the Goddess who ruled the world in accordance with universal law, represents the scales with their concomitant notions not only of justice, but of moderation, order and balance as well. According to Hesiod, the Goddess was the daughter of Heaven (Ouranos) and Earth (Gaia) and therefore of matter and spirit, of the visible and the invisible. In Homer she is viewed as a symbol of Fate. During the battle between Achilles and Hector, we read how Zeus lifted on high his golden scales, and set therein two fates of grievous death, one for Achilles and one for Hector. (Iliad 22, 208-13) The notion of fate bears with it that of an individual’s life-span, and the scales were an emblem of Saturn or Cronos, who as judge and executioner measured out human life and also held the scales, to balance the portion of years and seasons, days and nights.

Erinys was the chthonic Greek Goddess of wrath. She may be equated with a wrathful Demeter who is sometimes given the epithet Erinys. Erinys appears in the collective form of the three Erinys. In the Iliad they are described as those “who beneath the earth punish dead men, whoever has sworn a false oath.” In Roman mythology they are the Furies. The Romans inherited not only the mysteries of Egypt but also purloined the myths of Greece.

Themis became the Graeco-Roman Goddess of justice and order. She is the impartial deity who sits blindfolded in Hades and judges the souls of the dead to determine whether they will pass to the Elysian fields or the fires of Tartarus. She was attended by three lesser judgement deities, Aeacos, Minos and Rhadamanthos. In these we see the shadowy faces of the Norns. The guilty are handed over to the Furies – the Dirae, Erinys or Eumenides. In Attica Themis was accorded a sanctuary beside which that of Nemesis was later built. Nemesis was the Graeco-Roman Goddess of justice and revenge, the dreaded deity who, with the Furies, is responsible for transporting the souls of the guilty to Tartarus. She is also described as the deification of indignation. In certain respects she provides a parallel with the Goddess Erinys. Her cult became one of morality.

Scales are often depicted on Christian graves, Judaeo-Christian thought on this subject being much the same as that of pagan antiquity. The Cabala says that before creation, “the Ancient of Days held the scales,” before the divine command which set creation in motion. Several Old Testament writers compare notions of good and evil with those of the scales. Thus Job (31 v6): “Let me be weighed in the balance, that God may know my iniquity,” and “The way of the just is uprightness; thou, most upright, dost weigh the path of the just.” (Isaiah 26, v7). Knowledge of good and evil is an exact and strict science. It weighs in the balance. This meaning comes out in Ecclesiasticus (16 v24-25): “My son, hearken unto me, and learn knowledge …. I will show forth doctrine in weight, and declare his knowledge exactly.” Good means what has struck a balance between the internal and the external. In Jewish thought devils are regarded as being powerless against what has achieved this balance. In terms of practical occultism, that which is “evil” is such only in that it is “unruly”, ie difficult to control, and “unbalanced force” in cabalistic terminology.

In Christian iconography, St Michael, the Archangel of the Day of Judgement, holds a pair of scales. Jesus was held to be the demi-urge as Christ Pantocrator. He was “clothed with the sun” and the two-edged sword of truth and justice issued from his very mouth. In Byzantium a seat was reserved at the council table of the Emperor for the physical presence of the Logos. Divine law was translated to the earth to maintain the balanced relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm. Curiously, in the Armenian cathedral in Jerusalem hang ostrich eggs, suspended from the ceiling, as symbols of hope and resurrection, the legacy of Maat as conducive to those ends. In England the exercise of heavenly justice survived in the Divine Right of Kings until the demise of Charles I who succumbed to secular law. The blindfolded statue of Justice, the Justitia of the Romans, atop the Old Bailey bears the scales and a sword. At the State Opening of Parliament the Sword of State is borne before the Sovereign. At her coronation, Queen Elizabeth was enjoined: “With this sword do justice; stop the growth of iniquity.”

The Influence of India

The armies of Alexander the Great reached the borders of India. On the sub-continent (and in provincial temples in the UK today) Siva is a deity with the dual role of both creator and destroyer of life, more generally the latter. He personifies the inexorable passage of time and out of destruction he creates new life. He is thought to be a pre-Indo-European deity whose attributes appear on seals from the Indus Valley civilization. His consort, or more precisely his female aspect, is Sakti, but he is also closely linked with the terrible Kali and the goddess Sati. One of his attributes is a drum (“damaru”), producing the rhythm of creation. He has a strong association with fire and holds a ball of flame – the destructive corollary to creation. The Saivite sect envisage Siva as a creator, preserve and destroyer and he is manifest in three aspects of his own power. As the “Lord of the dance”, Nataraja, Siva’s steps follow the rhythm of universal forces. He dances in a circle of fire, treading upon the dwarfish figure, Vamana, who is the personification of ignorance, symbolising the puny state of many in the cosmos. In his cosmic capacity as Nataraja, “king of the dancers”, he performs before Parvarti, his wife, in order to relieve the sufferings of his followers. Here it is that we encounter one of the great symbols of world mythology, a profound conception realized in the beautiful bronzes of southern India. The trances induced through dance and yoga are viewed as the same, and can be observed in the ritual dancing before the holy images in Hindu temples. Siva Nataraja is encircled by a ring of flames, the vital processes of universal creation, and with one leg raised, he stands upon a tiny figure crouching on a lotus. This dwarfish demon represents human ignorance, the conjurings of “maya”, illusion, whose conquest is the attainment of wisdom and release from the bondages of the world. In one hand the god holds a drum, its sound the sign of speech, the source of revelation and tradition; his second hand offers blessing, sustenance; in the palm of the third hand a tongue of fire is a reminder of destruction; and the fourth hand points downward to the uplifted foot, already saved from the power of illusion. It signifies the refuge and salvation of the devotee.

The sacred language of the Hindus is Sanskrit. “Karma” is the Sanskrit word (from the root “kri”, meaning “to make” or “to do”) that denotes the linkage of cause and effect which assures the stability of the universe. With this cosmic meaning is mingled an ethical significance, human actions being inextricably linked with their consequences producing situations for which those who committed the acts are responsible, either in this life of in past lives. During the Vedic period “Karma” carried with it a ritual, evidence of that awareness that whatever happens may be regarded as just reward or punishment. All is contained within a span of time far longer than an individual’s life. Here lies the basis of reincarnation. “Human beings are the heirs of their actions,” said the Buddha. “Awareness is based upon intentions, plans and preoccupations … From this rises that whole burden of pain.” By its definition, “Karma” depends upon awareness. It is a vision linking human freedom with the universal order in an organised physical and moral system. “Karma” means approximately “action”, though linked with the idea of consequence of actions, through the chain of causation. In western occultism it is applied to the “Law of Karma”, the unfolding of destiny through repeated earth lives, in which merit and demerit are reflected in life conditions, events and inner attitudes. Applied to astrology it is increasingly used in esoteric circles, and many astrologers regard the natal chart as an impress of the particular karma which the incarnating ego (that is, the native) has undertaken to resolve in this particular lifetime. Some astrologers see the horoscope as reflecting the result of a series of past lives.

Tao – The Way

Beyond India, through Indo-China and in the Far East, Tao is not only a definite philosophical doctrine, as in Taoism, but it is also the basis of a number of differing philosophies. In Chinese, the word “tao” means “the way” or “the path”. Any explanation of the meaning takes us back to “yin” and “yang”. It is, however, in no sense the sum of the two since “yin” and “Yang” either alternate or co-exist in a state of opposition. “Tao” might be said to govern their alternation. This explains the basic law at the root of all actual or symbolic change, which allows Tao to be regarded as a principle of order ruling mental activity and the cosmos alike without distinction between them. It may be compared with the Stoic notion of reason, the Logos immanent in the universe as a whole and in each individual in his or her specific fate. It is “that which is” and correlates with the concept throughout the cosmos. Such ideas inform the divinatory processes of the I Ching

Christian missionaries have availed themselves of the force inherent in the word “tao”. Thus the earliest translation of the Gospel according to St John reads: “In the beginning was the Taw and the Tao was with God, and the Tao was God.” Religious devotees adopted Tao as the name of their divinity. It is evident that the Tao played a paramount role in the life and culture of the Chinese, as various schools of philosophy as religions adopted the term. In the UK there are branches of the True Jesus Church, a sect originating in Hong Kong. Yang, the light, active masculine principle, and Yin, the dark passive and feminine, in their interaction underlie and constitute the whole world of forms (“the ten thousand things”). They proceed from, and together make manifest, Tao, the source and law of being. As “road” or “way”, Tao is the way or course of nature, destiny, cosmic order; the Absolute made manifest. Tao is also therefore “truth”, “right conduct”. Yang and yin together as Tao are depicted by the familiar swirling circle. Tao underlies the cosmos. Tao inhabits every created thing; it is the basis of the increasingly popular Feng-Shui. The Great Original of the Chinese chronicles, the holy woman T’ai Yuan, combined in her person the masculine Yang and the feminine Yin. The cabalistic teachings of the medieval Jews, as well as the Gnostic Christian teachings of the second century, represent the Word Made Flesh as androgynous – which was indeed the state of Adam as he was created before the female aspect, Eve, was incarnated in another form.

“So God created Adam in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Genesis 1 v27) The question arises as to the nature of the image of God; but the answer is already given in the text, and is clear enough. “When the Holy One, Blessed be He, created the first man, He created him androgynous.” (Midrash Rabbah 8 v1; commentary on Genesis) The removal of the feminine into another form symbolises the beginning of the fall from perfection into duality; and it was naturally followed by the discovery of the duality of good and evil, exile from the garden where God walks on earth, and thereupon the building of the wall of Paradise, constituted of the “coincidence of opposites”, by which Man (now named man and woman) is cut off from not only the vision but even the recollection of the image of God, guarded by the Angel with the flaming sword. This is the Biblical version of a myth known to many lands. It represents one of the basic ways of symbolising the mystery of creation; the development of eternity into time, the breaking of the one into the two and then the many, as well as the generation of new life through the reconjuncton of the two. This image stands at the beginning of the cosmogonic cycle, and with equal propriety at the conclusion of life’s quests, at the moment when the wall of Paradise is breached, the divine form found and recollected, and wisdom regained, when “…. the rim of the Abyss is shattered and is known consummation”. 4 This may be compared to the reflection of James Joyce: “in the economy of heaven there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being wife unto himself”. (Ulysses, p210)

Underlying the notions of the creation and destruction of the world are found in the theme of the Celtic story of the Battle of the Mag Tuired between the Gods, the Tuatha de Danann, representing the ordered, hierarchical society of Gods and men, and the Formorians, an image of Chaos and the world before Genesis. No Celtic mythological source describes the creation of the world directly, but Ireland underwent five mythic invasions and each time fresh fields, new lakes and fresh rivers came into existence bearing the names of their creators. Chaos was annihilated, making it possible to settle, stock to be raised, hunting to take place and finally a culture to be established. Creation signals the end of chaos through the introduction into the universe of a degree of shape, or order and of hierarchy. Traditional hieroglyphics attributed to the ancient Egyptians depict the main aspects of creation as geometric figures, as a square, representing the orderly world, firmly based upon the four cardinal points. This is echoed in alchemical diagrams, as in the Seventh Key of Basil Valentine, which shows the cosmic scales and sword of justice, with the four seasons surrounding Aqua, or primeval water. After the act of creation, a distinction is generally drawn between the two forces, one immanent in matter, the other transcendent. The former is matter itself, suffused with creative energy and tending spontaneously to produce constantly differentiated shapes.

The latter is creative energy continuing its work and sustaining it in being, the world being conceived as a continuous creation.

Tiw and Forseti – Law and the Vikings

The Romans amalgamated their gods with the deities of conquered peoples. When they came to Britain it is likely that the Germanic Tiw who is alluded to in a Latin inscription on a Roman altar discovered at Housesteads in Northumberland, near to Hadrian’s Wall. This altar dates from the third century and was erected by German soldiers serving with the Roman legions. It bears the Latin inscription: “Deo Marti Thincso …”; that is: “To the god Mars Thincsus …”. The epithet “Thincsus” shows that Tiw was seen as a native Mars who presided over the “thing”, the assembly where the discussions of the community were regulated according to law. Tiw’s spear was not so much a weapon as a sign of juridical power. Some skalds said that he was the son of Woden. He was extremely brave and enterprising. He often awarded victory to one of the sides engaged in combat. Thus it was prudent to invoke him when going into battle. In one legend the poets give him the leading role, a tale which bears witness to the energy of his character, in which the wolf Fenris, understanding that he has been outwitted, bit off the god’s right hand at the wrist. Thenceforth he was one-handed. It is significant that Tiw’s most important appearance in mythology is in a matter of legal contract. With Woden, he forms a dyad which is found elsewhere amongst the Indo-European peoples, the one-handed and the one-eyed. the man of law and the man of magical fury. The south Germans gave Tiw the name Ziu, the north Germans Tuiz. The Scandinavians called him Tyr. It is generally admitted that all these appellations correspond to the Sanskrit “dyaus”, the Greek Zeus and the Latin Deus. Originally Tiw had been a god corresponding to the Indian Mitra, who was patron of the legal side of government, but with the gradual militarisation of Germanic society he had gradually been restricted to the field of rules governing battle, at which time the Romans identified him with their Mars, and the Latin “Martis dies” by transposition became the day of Tiw, or Tuesday.

Another significant Northern deity is Forseti, said by Snorri Sturlsson (1179 – 1241) to be the son of Balder. According to an Icelandic list of dwellings of the Gods, Forseti owned a gold and silver hall, Glitnir, and was a law-maker and arbiter of disputes. As the son of Balder, God of light, and of Nanna, Goddess of immaculate purity, Forseti was the god of justice and truth. He was the wisest, most eloquent and most gentle of all the Gods. When his presence in Asgard became known, the Gods awarded him a seat in the council hall, decreed that he should be patron of justice and righteousness, and gave him as abode the radiant palace Glitnir. This dwelling had a silver roof, supported on pillars of gold and it shone so brightly that it could be seen from a great distance. “There Forseti dwells, throughout all time, and every strife allays” says Saemund’s Edda (Thorpe’s translation). Here, upon an exalted throne, Forseti, the law-giver, sat day after day, settling the differences of Gods and men, patiently listening to both sides of every question and finally pronouncing sentences so equitable that none ever found fault with his decrees. Such were this God’s eloquence and power of persuasion that he always succeeded in touching his hearers’ hearts and never failed to reconcile even the most bitter foes. All who left his presence were thereafter sure to live in peace for none dared break a vow once made to him lest they should incur his just anger and be smitten immediately to death.

As God of justice and eternal law, Forseti was supposed to preside over every judicial assembly; he was invariably appealed to by all who were about to undergo a trial, and it was said that he rarely failed to help the deserving. Forseti was said to hold his assizes in spring, summer and autumn but never in winter. It became customary, in all the Northern countries, to dispense justice in those seasons, the people declaring that it was only when the light shone clearly in the heavens that right could be apparent to all, and that it was utterly impossible to render an equitable verdict during the dark season. There is no paradox here with the blindfolded figure of Justice. The light of heaven gives perspicacity; the blindfold is a symbol of impartiality.

Forseti is seldom mentioned except in connection with Balder. He apparently had no share in the closing battle in which all the other Gods played such prominent parts. His absence is symptomatic of cosmic disorder. (In times of social upheaval the “me” of Mesopotamia were “dispersed” or “forgotten”.) As the created form of the individual must dissolve, so that of the universal also. This has been called the “cyclic uproar” and is a final, all-engulfing cataclysm. One of the strongest representations of this Armageddon appears in the Poetic Edda. Pitted against the Gods was a race of frost giants, the descendants of Bergelmir, survivor of the bloody deluge caused by the slaying of Ymir. It is evident that the Gods were in the hands of fate and inexorably moving to their own doom, “ragnarøk” (ragnarok) . On this day, the forces of evil would overcome the Gods and their allies, the “einherjar”, the slain champions beloved of Odin. Fenrir, the great wolf, would catch and swallow the sun at this day of doom.

The idea of “Dies Irae”, literally “Day of Wrath”, was prevalent in the Middle Ages. Folk looked to the end of the world, anticipated the Last Judgement followed by the Millennium. The year 1000 excited mythological speculation. Mankind expected a new revelation, the coming of Antichrist, and the last days of wrath. There was also a vision of the new age. The Saviour would return, bind Satan, and reign forever after. This new aeon would bring forth a new community of perfected beings who have no need of clergy or sacraments or scripture. This anticipated modern millennium theories. In old northern beliefs, two human beings. Lif and Lifthrasir, would survive the cataclysm: they will re-people the earth and worship Balder, some of Odin, in the new heaven.

Living with Divine Law

It is apparent that some kind of good behaviour is enjoined on humans to maintain the stability of universal life. Order was established out of cosmos at the creation of the world. Divine laws were translated to earth to maintain the balanced relationship between the visible and the unseen. There must be a necessary balance between good and evil to sustain life. Evil is what inhibits this balance and hence destroys good works. Satan was considered evil because he was proud, ie “ungoverned”; he upset the balance and was obdurate in his “sin”. The old Egyptians recited a “negative” confession that denied any transgressions. Conjurers using the Clavicle of Solomon use a confession that admits a catalogue of sins for which forgiveness is sought, as only “the pure in heart” shall see God and the spirits. The panoply of the law may deter many from frustrating divine order. (Any sane person who has been indicted at the Old Bailey will readily admit the overpowering majesty of justice.) But what may be undertaken to foster a balanced life for all those who crave peace and joy? Following the Ten Commandments, or such as the laws of Olodumare, the chief power for followers of Santeria, the Afro-caribbean cult path, which echo the decologue? Yet there is no law beyond “Do what thou wilt!” though votaries are wisely enjoined to add the tenet of the Wiccan Rede that “it harm none”.

The latter is creative energy continuing its work and sustaining it in being, the world being conceived as a continuous creation.

The cosmic economy as exemplified by the laws of balance is met with in cultures other than those noted above. The scales of the Last Judgement are alluded to in the Koran; in Tibet, the pans of the scales used to weigh the individual’s good and bad deeds are loaded with white and black pebbles respectively. In Persia, the angel Rashnu stood beside Mithras and weighed souls at the Bridge of Fate. This faith came to Albion with the Romans. Mithras was praised on his birthday, 25th December, in the wake of the solstice, and honoured as Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. This date was taken as the official birthday of Jesus, who was hailed as the Sun of Righteousness. His Second Coming, to “judge the quick and the dead by fire”, will be heralded by “cyclic uproar” when “the sun is darkened, the moon turned to blood, the stars fall from heaven and the angels die”.. This cataclysm is a type of that fear of cosmic disintegration hidden in the psyche of man since the foundation of the world. It is not given to us to know the advent of divine wrath in our lives: the eyes of the Easter Island statues are sightless. At the dreadful moment of truth when we stand alone, we may only pray that our lives have been integrated with cosmic law, that we appear “justified” and are given a place in the barque of the Sun God, the “Boat of Millions of Years”, so that we may journey through the portals of heaven into the dawn of the New Aeon, be it clothed in the guise of whatever belief. So mote it be!

In the Celtic lore of Ireland, instead of one heroic Light-bringer, legends present a whole race of divinities whose culture and science lay the foundations of civilization and, sooner or later, entice even the most primitive to develop their faculties of spiritual intelligence.

Buried within Ireland’s ancient tales of adventure is a wealth of information: accounts, for instance, of man’s physical and psychological development, and of how divine kings and heroes, the Tuatha De Danann, came among mortals to teach and uplift. Their instructions and example raised the child race “up on their shoulders,” extending its vision and inspiring it with wonder and a reverence for life at all levels. In addition, the Tuatha De Danann gave men “tools” with which they could prosper: their actions, exemplifying morality and justice, set patterns of conduct; their skills, ranging from the domestic to the creative, encouraged the peoples of Erin to develop their potential, and gave them the means of achieving wealth and contentment. (Ancient Ireland was named after Erin, wife of one of the early kings of the Tuatha De Danann.) These skills included those arts of chivalry and warfare that are essential if the forces of ignorance, destruction, and death — within and without — are to be held in abeyance. To this end they brought from the mythical cities in the North four magical talismans: the sword, spear, caldron, and stone of destiny — symbols all of the power and authority that characterize advanced human beings.

Furthermore, according to old Irish manuscripts, these lofty men and women were the inspiration for the founding of and for the teachings given to the worthy at sacred centers like the one reported to have been located in the Boyne county near Tara. It was to these pre-Celtic centers, quite possibly, that later Celtic lore referred when mentioning the “Sidhe-palaces,” “Islands,” and “Wells of Wisdom,” in much the same way as other religions referred to their Mystery Schools as “Gardens of Delight,” “Cities,” “Trees of Knowledge,” and “Subterranean Caves.” At these sacred centers, it is believed, the candidates, whether they were kings or druids, bards or brehons, underwent training designed to aid them in controlling and purifying their lower natures and in awakening and developing the spiritual qualities of their souls. Here they received oral instruction in subjects like law and historical lore, mathematics, music, and poetry — all considered interrelated by their scholars.

We may presume they studied the sciences relating to earth and to the celestial spheres, for how else could they understand nature’s rhythms of growth and decay, the time to plant and to harvest, unless they knew the seasons of the sun, moon, and stars, and the interplay of their forces? They mastered the wordless language of symbols so as to “speak,” mind to mind, across immense distances of time and of space. Sonic individuals passed to higher degrees where, gaining the necessary wisdom and strength, they transcended the confines of human mortality and were able to travel “awake” the journey of the spirit through death, and experience first hand the reality of the inner, superior and inferior realms they had studied in theory. Possibly it was to these inner worlds their poets referred when writing of the “islands” where:

Pain and treachery are unknown,
So, too are grief, mourning and death,
Disease and infirmity. . . .
The young do not grow old at all . . . — J. Markale, “Ancienne Poesie d’Irlande,” Cahiers du Sud, no. 335, p. 27.
Much of this knowledge filtered down through the ages and caused Caesar to write of the Celts: “They wish to inculcate this as one of their leading tenets, that souls do not become extinct, but pass after death from one body to another, and they think that men by this tenet are in a great degree excited to valor, the fear of death being disregarded” (Gallic Wars, Book VI).

Some who thus passed “betwixt and between” the veils of the dream- and the earth-life were unable, or unwilling, to return. The few who did, for the benefit of their people, were called ollam, “master-poets,” the equal of kings, and hailed in the quaint figure of the Celts, as Salmon of Wisdom. Other mythologies revere returning initiants as Sons of the Sun, Divine Kings, Trees of Life, and Fishermen.

What were they like, these radiant Tuatha De Danann who had lived in islands at the North of the world learning magic, druidism, sorcery, and wisdom, and who came, it is said, through the sky in dark clouds that blotted the light of the sun to alight on a mountain of Conmaicne Rein?

Some believe they were the mighty builders and magicians of a prehistoric age who left behind treasures of druidic lore and curious megalithic monuments whose cryptic markings still puzzle all but the few initiated into their hidden significance. Ireland’s sagas describe them as handsome and delightful, wise, brave, and by far the most gifted in mind and disposition who ever set foot on the island of Erin. Their title adds more: Tuatha De Danann is translated as “the people of the goddess Danu,” and as “men of science who were gods,” dan here meaning knowledge. These Tuatha De Danann, a people of high esoteric knowledge, are said to have incarnated among mankind, enkindling the fires of rational thought and the latent “hidden” abilities of their higher intelligence, abilities referred to in Celtic fairy tale as second sight, enchantments, illusions, shape-shiftings, bodily transformations, restoring life to the dead, raising winds, mists, tempests, and the like. There are innumerable sagas and songs also which commemorate the Tuatha De who served as the early high kings, as warriors, poets, seers, and as druids whose superior intelligence, inspiration, and magical powers guided the decisions of many a royal court; and who later, as the “fairies,” living under the earth in mounds, caves, and “palaces of crystal and gold,” perform wonders that defy mortal explanation.

Incidentally, the Tuatha De Danann were not the first divine race to reach Ireland. Before them others had come — possibly to prepare earth and mankind for the awakening of mind. Two of these, the Partholon and Nemed, had come in ships “from other worlds.” The race of Partholon found Ireland a barren, treeless, grassless plain — as is man’s life when devoid of intellectual gifts and the skills they direct. But during the 300 years of their reign earth blossomed, “stretched and widened” miraculously to accommodate the increasing population, and in response to their labors. For they not only constructed buildings, planted crops, hunted and fished — even cooking for the first time the food that they ate — but they also waged war against the treacherous “not-gods,” enemies who personify, possibly, not so much alien forces, but the elements within ourselves and our environment that must constantly be held in control.

The race of Nemed (literally “holy,” “sacred”) succeeded that of the Partholon and continued endeavors that extended and improved the land and kept the “not-gods” in suppression. Then they too “returned whence they came, or died” — the two acts being considered identic in mythologic parlance. By now Ireland and its native inhabitants were ready to receive the Tuatha De Danann and the talismans they brought from the cities in the North.

From Findias they brought Nuadu’s “invincible sword,” from whose stroke no one escapes or recovers. It was this same Nuadu who later lost his hand in a battle against the Fir Bolgs, and was forced into abdication because, according to law, no king was permitted to rule who suffered personal blemish. However, his physicians supplied him, first with an artificial silver hand that “moved in all its joints and was as strong and supple” as his own, and then, seven years later when his wrist festered, dug up and rejoined his original hand with skill and enchantment, so that he was whole again and able to reassume the kingship. Nuadu’s invincible sword, apparently representing the infallible justice of karmic retribution, became among knights and pilgrims alike the emblem par excellence of justice, courage, and purity of soul. Like man’s “will of iron” its blade is wondrously wrought and tempered in the fire of experience, and is able to cut out corruption and sever the knots of personal fears and confusion to liberate the spiritual self.

From the city of Gorias the “Ever-Living,” Tuatha De brought Lugh’s “terrible lance” which both kills and cures. Evidently it was this lance, suggestive as it is of concentrated, one-pointed thought, that won Lugh the titles “Far Shooter” and “Long-handed,” for when drawn in battle it seemingly had a life of its own and sped forth like an arrow of flame to execute his desire. While Lugh is the sun god of Celtic deities, among men he is an omnicompetent hero, as is illustrated in a story that portrays also the high standard of Tuatha attainment and the advantage of developing all sides of one’s nature:

Lugh, when a youth, as the legend tells, happened to arrive unexpectedly at the palace of Tara at the very hour when Nuadu and his court were celebrating his restoration to the throne. The gatekeeper, annoyed by the untimely interruption, confronted the youth brusquely demanding to know his name and skill, for only the gifted were admitted to Tara. “I am Lugh, a carpenter,” the lad replied. “Sorry,” said the guard, closing the door in his face, “we have a carpenter and need no other.” “But,” Lugh cried out, “I am also a smith, expert in working with gold, bronze, and all other metals.” “We have a smith,” grumbled the doorkeeper. Not discouraged, Lugh declared that he was also a warrior, a harpist, poet, athlete, historian, physician, and adept in magic and sorcery. As each in turn was dismissed, he added, “Ask your king whether he has one man skilled in each and every art. If he has, I will depart at once.”

Nuadu, on receiving the message was delighted, and welcomed the prince to a seat of honor, for he was “a sage in every art.” Indeed, Lugh’s wisdom and valor soon won him the title, Samildanach, master scholar, warrior, artist, and craftsman.

From the mythical city of Falias the Tuatha De carried forth the prophetic Lia Fail, “Stone of Knowledge,” which utters a humanlike cry when touched by the rightful heir to the throne. According to popular belief, this Stone of Fal, of Destiny, was taken to Scotland by an Egyptian princess, Scota, and in 1296 transported by Edward I from Scone to Westminster Abbey where it is said to form part of the Coronation Chair. Irish antiquarians deny this, however, and present evidence that this remarkable relic never left the sanctuary of Tara, near Dublin.

It is interesting that Ireland was once called “The Plain of Fal,” and her inhabitants, “Men of Fal,” which is in line with the tradition that this land was an ancient center of mystic lore. In this respect one wonders if the prophetic Stone of Fal could have been interpreted by bards of old as representing man’s inner voice. And, we wonder, if the similarity between the Celtic legend of the flagstones Blocc and Bluigne, which guard this sacred Lia Fail, and the Greek myth of the Symplegades or Clashing Rocks, is mere coincidence? Or are they, as some assert, elements in the rites of initiation of the Celtic and Greek Mysteries? Like the mighty rocks that open and shut, which Jason and the Argonauts encountered on their voyage, the Celtic flagstones, standing so close together a hand could barely pass sideways between them, prevented the unworthy from approaching the Stone. However, when a deserving candidate advanced, they opened wide to permit his moving on to the Lia Fail, which, with a cry of its own recognized his merit, or was silent. In one interpretation such pairs of stones represent conflicts between mind and emotion, between aggression and submission, that must be resolved before one can pass onwards in safety.

From Murias the gods brought Dagda’s “inexhaustible caldron” whose abundance provides sustenance to each according to his tastes and deserts. This vessel was, like the holy grail, a constant source of inspiration and of spiritual rejuvenation. Dagda (literally “the good god”) was brother of Lugh and one of the greatest kings of the Tuatha De Danann. Sometimes he was regarded as god of the sky and lord of great knowledge, sometimes as god of the earth who protected particularly corn and milk. His underground sidhe (kingdom) was a bountiful Elysium where death and desire were unknown, where one can hear the melodious tones of his “living harp” which causes the seasons’ procession, brings laughter and tears, and that slumber from which one awakens to discover that but a moment has passed, or a lifetime.

Dagda had, it is said, a remarkable wife, Boann, and a daughter, Brigit, who comes the closest of all Celtic deities to being a fire god. She was beloved as a goddess of fire and the hearth, of poetry, music, and healing long before she was Christianized into Saint Brigit, patron of present day Erin. The countless legends regarding these Tuatha De Danann quite obviously cloak mystic facts — wives, and often daughters, are symbols in the East and the West of aspects, or of the forces and powers, of the spirit, or of gods. One story about Dagda’s wife Boann from the 12th century Book of Leinster seems to relate closely to the awakening of mind:

There was, the bards relate, one place in old Ireland so sacred that no one, human or divine, was allowed to go near it. For there, hidden by the shade of nine hazel trees was a mysterious well in whose depths lived salmon who, having eaten the crimson nuts that fell from the tree, had gained knowledge of everything in the world. Now Boann, being curious, decided to go to that well — but as she approached, its waters rose to repel her. She ran and escaped, but the waters, having risen to flood and unable to recede, flowed forth as a river, called the Boyne (this well is also described as the source of the Shannon, and also of the seven chief rivers of Ireland), its Salmon of Knowledge destined to swim where it led them. Fortunate is the fisherman, people believe, who finds one of these fish, for a taste of its flesh brings not only universal wisdom but, as it did to the famous Finn mac Coul, the high inspiration of the poet and seer.

We find in this story a Garden of Eden, in the peaceful and forbidden precincts of the well, that signifies the condition of innocence and purity that was man’s before his reasoning faculties developed; a sacred well, which represents, as do rivers and lakes, humanity’s “other world,” unfathomed spiritual potential and access thereto; nine hazel trees, emblems, as trees are in many religions, of cosmic truths; crimson nuts (apples), or those ideas which, when grasped by the courageous, inquiring, and disciplined mind, bring self-conscious awareness, knowledge of the gods, and of good and evil. They bring, in other words, discrimination, one of the most godlike of human qualities: with its application the course of our life is infallibly true, and our rational mind is spiritually illumined.

One appeal of this story, and of the Celts’ rich tradition, is the assurance that spiritual teachers, Salmon of Wisdom, have always been present in the “rivers” of life and are available to satisfy our hunger for truth; or, as Platonic philosophers might say, are available to bring to the surface the awakening ideas implanted in the mind of primitive mankind by the gods.

Irish Mythology has no creation myth which explains how things came into being. The world, or more specifically, Ireland, was always there. The Mythology states that, before the Celts, there were five waves of invaders. Each had a profound effect on the land.
By Steve Blamires

Five successive groups of invaders are said to have arrived in Ireland before the present day Gaels arrived. The first three groups are known by the names of their respective leaders and the last two by the names of the races involved.These five invaders were:

Cessair
Partholon
Nemed
The Fir Bolg
The Tuatha De Danann

The first of these Cessair was a woman and she arrived with her mainly female companions before the Biblical Flood. She was said to be a grand-daughter of Noah and he, with his inside information, warned her of what God had up his sleeve for the wicked peoples of this world.She fled to Ireland because, “She thought it probable that a place where people had never come before, and where no evil or sin had been committed, and which was free from the world’s reptiles and monsters, that place would be free from the Flood.”

She arrived forty days before the deluge but two of her three ships were wrecked and she eventually came ashore at Corca Dhuibhne which is the Dingle Peninsula in Co. Kerry. The total crew of the ship that survived was fifty women and three men. These men were Cessair’s father Bith, son of Noah; Ladra the pilot of the ship; and Fionntán. They divided the women amongst the men and amongst Fionntán’s women was Cessair herself. The other two men soon died and Fionntán, horrified at the prospect of having to see to the fifty women on his own, fled. Cessair consequently died of a broken heart and soon after all the other women died too, leaving Fionntán all alone in this new country.

A curious passage in the Lebor Gabala Erenn gives an account of one of the other men, Ladra: “Ladra, the pilot, from whom is Ard Ladrann named he is the first dead man of Ireland before the flood. He died of excess of women, or it is the shaft of the oar that penetrated his buttock. Whatever way it was, however, that Ladra is the first dead man in Ireland.” Whether this strange insertion was meant to be deliberately humorous or not we shall never know!

During his various shape-shifting he witnessed all the great events thet took place in Ireland…
A variant account of this first invasion of Ireland states that Noah had refused entry into the Ark to these three men because he believed them to be robbers for some reason or other. Cessair had offered to bring them to safety if they accepted her leadership which they gladly did and they duly arrived in Ireland. The story thereafter is much the same as the one just recounted. Cessair is given a more important role in this version though in that she is credited with bringing the first sheep to Ireland.

Fionntán, the sole survivor of Cessair’s expedition, lived to be five and a half thousand years old and during these long years he took on various forms including that of a salmon, an eagle and a hawk. During his various shape-shiftings he witnessed all the great events that took place in Ireland and he passed on this knowledge to the historians before he eventually died. That is why we know of Cessair and her companions and all of the many events that took place long before anybody was there to write it all down. So much for the first invasion.

Ireland then lay waste for several hundred years after Cessair and her companions died until eventually Partholon arrived with his followers. Partholon is a corruption of the original form of the name Bartholomaeus which was said to mean “son of him who stayed the waters” and consequently he is associated with the post-deluge invasion of Ireland whereas Cessair was the pre-deluge invader.

According to the Lebor Gabala Erenn he was a Greek who fled Greece after slaying his father and mother in an unsuccessful attempt to take the kingship from his brother. After seven years of wandering he arrived in Ireland with his wife and his three sons with their wives. Of these it is said that Beoil made the first guest-house in Ireland, Brea instituted cooking and duelling, and that Malaliach was the first brewer who made ale from fern. Partholon also brought with him four oxen which were the first cattle in Ireland. At the time they arrived in this new country there was only one clear plain in all of Ireland, so they set about making more room for themselves and cleared another four plains.

The next invader, Nemed, which is an old Celtic word for a holy or secred place, thus giving him druidical connections…
After thirty years in Ireland Partholon eventually died but his survivors and descendants continued to inhabit the country for a further five hundred and twenty years by which time they numbered over nine thousand. They were all overtaken by a plague however and they all died between two Mondays in May. All, that is, except a character called Tuán mac Cairill, son of Partholon’s brother Starn. He seems to have been very similar in nature to Cessair’s Fionntán in that he too lived for a very long time, took on various forms a salmon, a stag, a boar and an eagle, witnessed all the great events which shaped Ireland and subsequently recounted them to the latter day historians and recorders. And so the second invasion came to an end.

The next invader, Nemed, which is an old Celtic word for a holy or sacred place, thus giving him druidical connections, arrived thirty years after Partholon’s people had been wiped out by the plague. He had a fleet of numerous ships, but on their journey they came across a tower of gold in the sea. Greedy for the gold they went to take the tower but the sea rose in a great torrent and swept them all away except for one ship. This was Nemed’s own and on board were his wife Macha, his four sons and their wives, and twenty other people. After a year and a half of wandering they eventually landed in Ireland.

Ireland by this time was being used as a base by the strange race known as the Fomoire and after three great battles Nemed defeated them and built himself a strong fort in south Armagh. Nemed eventually died from the plague and the Fomoire returned and imposed heavy taxes on his survivors. After a while the survivors of Nemed’s original people decided they had had enough of the Fomoire’s oppression and they staged a revolt. They put up a good fight but were eventually over-powered by the evil Fomoire and only one ship managed to escape from Ireland with a crew of thirty warriors on board.

According to tradition later groups of settlers in Ireland were descended from these fleeing warriors. One grandson of Nemed’s, Semeon, went to Greece where his progeny later became the race known as the Fir Bolg; another grandson, Beothach, fathered the race that would become the Tuatha De Danann and one of his sons, Fearghus Leathdearg, went to Britain and fathered the race that would later be known as the Britonic people. There are points within Nemed’s story which imply that he was originally of the race later to be known as the Tuatha De Danann the fact that his name is a well-known Celtic one associated with druids and, consequently, the Tuatha De Danann; his wife Macha is a goddess of the later Tuatha De Danann; his fight against the Fomoire who were by tradition the enemies of the Tuatha De Danann and the constant reference to threes his was the third invasion, they were thirty years at sea before finding Ireland, they had three great battles with the Fomoire, thirty warriors escaped Ireland, three of his descendants fathered the three main races all hint at these people actually being the forerunners to the Tuatha De Danann. Whether this was deliberate or whether it indicates a corruption in the original story of the five invasions we do not know but, for us at least, it does not really matter.

The last two invasions were not by induviduals but by whole rases of people.
From this we can see that the first three invaders of Ireland all bear striking similarities to each other and may well have come originally from one source which was later changed and adapted to suit the tastes of the day. Of the many legends which deal with these three invaders there are many which claim each one cleared more and more of the plains of Ireland and caused more and more rivers to burst forth and lakes to fill up which accounted for the way Ireland appeared to the Bronze Age Celt listening to these pseudo-histories. It is worth noting at this point that the Irish mythology is in a way unique amongst world mythologies in that it does not have a Creation myth, a story explaining how things came into being, as all other world mythologies and religions do. From what we can gather the Irish Celts believed that the world, or more specifically Ireland, had always existed but it had been changed and shaped throughout its existence by the successive waves of invaders and in-comers into the form that appeared to the Celt of the day.

The last two invasions were not by individuals but by whole races of people. The first of these was the Fir Bolg who, as we have just seen, were believed to be descendants of Nemed; so they were, in a sense, returning to their rightful lands.

The word Fir means men and the word Bolg can mean bag so the name Fir Bolg may mean ‘Men of the Bag’ and there are various legends explaining how they got this curious name. One legend says that while they were in Greece they were under bondage to the Greeks and they were forced to carry good soil to the high places and infertile regions in order to make Greece more suitable to agricultural development. They moved this good earth around in large leather bags and hence earned the name Men of the Bags. Another legend claims that the sharp cacti and bushes which they had to brush through whilst carrying these bags cut their legs and they took to wearing trousers in order to protect themselves. These trousers they made from the old and torn earth-bags and, hence, the name Men of the Bags which really referred to their leggings. Another tradition claims that while they were in Greece they carried around with them little bags containing soil from Ireland which had the effect of warding off the numerous poisonous snakes and reptiles which they encountered in Greece and, again, they earned the nick-name Men of the Bags because of this.

Another meaning of the word Bolg though is ‘spear’ and it could be the Fir Bolg actually means ‘Men of the Spear’ or spear-throwing warriors. This, to me, seems much more likely, especially as in one later legend specific mention is made of their very effective spears. Whatever the name originally signified we no longer know.

When they arrived in Ireland, which was destitute of people, five brothers divided the land amongst themselves and this explained the five fifths of Ireland. It is also said that during their captivity in Greece they became very numerous and actually split into three main sections there were the Fir Bolg proper, the Gaileoin, and the Fir Domhnann.

According to tradition the Gaileoin got their name, which means ‘Javelins of Wounding’, from the two words ‘gai’ a javelin and ‘leoin’ to wound, because they dug the hard clay of Greece with these short stabbing javelins. The Fir Domhnann were named after the deepness, ‘domhaine’ in Irish, of the clay after it was heaped on the bare Greek rocks.

It is the members of the Tuatha De Danann who make up the complete Irish Celtic pantheon.
In reality however we can compare these mythical peoples with known actual Celtic tribes the Fir Bolg would appear to have been the Belgae people who occupied modern day Belgium and parts of southern Britain, the Gaileoin were actually the Laighin, the main tribe of present day Leinster, and the Fir Domhnann were the Dumnonii tribe who occupied vast parts of Britain and western Europe. So even at these early stages we are able to identify elements amongst the mythology which are confirmed by history.

The Fir Bolg were only in possession of Ireland for thirty- seven years before the Tuatha De Danann invaded and drove them out to Islay, Rathlin, the Isle of Man, and Arran. Much later the Scottish Picts drove them out of Scotland and they ended up back in Ireland.

This last lot of invaders, the Tuatha De Danann, are the most interesting from a mythological point of view and it is the members of this strange race who make up the complete Irish Celtic pantheon. The meaning of their name is open to interpretation although it is most commonly given as ‘The People of the Goddess Danu’.

The word Tuatha does mean people but it specifically refers to rustic people and it is the root from which the present day Gaelic and Irish words for farmer and the countryside come. The implication of this word is that it is the ordinary people as opposed to the gentry or nobility who are being referred to. Tuatha also means the North and in the main legend dealing with the arrival in Ireland of the Tuatha De Danann “Cath Maige Tuired” the Battle of Moytura it is specifically stated that they came from the North. They also went on to develop the agricultural potential of Ireland and all this information is in fact already contained within the little word Tuatha.

The ‘De’ part of their name does mean goddess and the Danann part does refer to the goddess Danu. It was this same goddess who gave her name to the river Danube and to the country of Denmark. There is however an inconsistency in calling these people the ‘People of the Goddess Danu’ because this implies that Danu was an important goddess for one reason or another, perhaps even a mother goddess who was believed to be the great mother of this whole race. If we examine Irish Celtic mythology, however, in any detail we will discover that Danu is in fact a relatively obscure goddess and is certainly not a mother-goddess figure. It is also known that the Celts held all of their gods and goddesses to be of equal importance, so why single out a relatively obscure goddess, give her a status which she did not deserve and which went against one of their main religious tenets, and then call themselves after this goddess?

The answer to this may well lie in a misunderstanding as to why Danu was used as a tribal name. All of the Celtic deities had specific functions and associations and one of Danu’s main associations was with craftsmanship and artistic ability. Because the deity’s name was often interchangeable with his or her function it may well be that Tuatha De Danann actually means the People of the Goddess of Craftsmanship or, to put it a bit more simply, the Artistic People. Judging by the amazing Celtic artefacts and works of art in the form of jewellery and intricately prepared weapons and utensils which have come down to us today, this may well be a far better interpretation of their name than the People of the Goddess Danu which tells us little and is actually inconsistent with Celtic belief.

The sons of Mit arrived in Ireland from Spain and … eventually took possession of it from the defeated Tuatha De Danann.
These people then arrived in Ireland, fought with the entrenched Fir Bolg, defeated them and then took over the sovereignty of Ireland themselves. They too set about clearing plains and causing new rivers and lakes to burst forth and it is the adventures of the Tuatha De Danann which go to make up the whole corpus of knowledge we now refer to as the Mythological Cycle.

These, then, are the five invasions of Ireland according to ancient tradition. Things did not stop there with the Tuatha De Danann though because later stories tell us how the Sons of Mil arrived in Ireland from Spain and, after many adventures and battles, eventually took possession of it from the defeated Tuatha DeDanann. These Sons of Mil are said to be the forefathers of the Gaelic people, both Irish and Scottish, and their descendants are therefore technically still in charge of Ireland.

Mil’s full name is “Miles Hispaniae” which simply means soldier of Spain. This association with Spain is due to a fanciful derivation of the Latin word for Ireland Hibernia being derived from Iberia or Hiberia.

Mil’s arrival in Ireland, or strictly speaking his sons’ arrival in Ireland, is given yet again in the Lebor Gabala Erenn which from the mythologist’s point of view is an absolute treasure-house.

According to the ancient tradition the people of Scythia were descended from Noah’s son Japheth and one of their members was Fenius the Ancient who was amongst the people who went to build the Tower of Babel. Fenius was a great linguist and when the languages were separated by God he alone retained knowledge of them all. His grandson was called Gaedheal Glas and he fashioned the Irish, or Gaelic, language out of the seventy-two languages then in existence. Gaedheal and his descendants lived inEgypt and Gaedheal himself was friendly with Moses. According to one story Moses saved Gaedheal’s life after he had been bitten by a serpent by touching the affected part with his rod. The skin turned green at this place and hence his name Gaedheal Glas which means green. Moses also then proclaimed that Gaedheal would forever be safe from serpents and in whichever land he finally settled there would be no serpents there to molest him or his descendants.

After many years and different adventures the descendants of Gaedheal left Egypt and travelled around the Mediterranean Sea for a long time before they arrived in Spain which they subjugated by force. Their king at that time, Breoghan, built a great tower to protect their newly acquired territory and one clear evening his son Ith saw Ireland from that tower. Mil was Breoghan’s grandson and he left Spain curious to learn about his ancestors’ homes of Scythia and Egypt. His first wife died in Scythia but when in Egypt he remarried the pharaoh’s daughter who was called Scota. It was she who gave her name to the tribe who later became the Scots. Between his two wives he fathered no less than thirty-two sons and six of these sons Eibhear, Amhairghin Glungheal, Ir, Colptha, Erannan and Eireamhoin whose mother was Scota, later play an important part in the taking and naming of Ireland from the Tuatha De Danann.
Amhairghin sang a magic verse which calmed the seas… Mil set sail for Ireland but stopped on the way in Spain to sort out some trouble that was brewing there and, unfortunately, was killed before he had a chance to resume his journey to Ireland. Meanwhile his uncle Ith had already set sail for Ireland and landed with his party just as the kings of the Tuatha De Danann were holding a counsel to determine how best to divide the land amongst themselves. Ith came up with a suggestion which, on the surface, seemed very fair but on his way back to his boats the Tuatha De Danann became suspicious of his motives and killed him. His followers returned to Spain and teamed up with the sons of Mil to return to Ireland and take it by force.

As they approached Ireland, Erannan climbed the mast to have a better look at the place, fell and was killed. Another of Mil’s sons, Ir, rowed ahead but his oar broke: he fell backwards into the sea and was drowned. Finally they landed at Inbhear Sceine (Kenmare Bay in Co. Kerry) and Amhairghin was the first to set foot on Irish soil. The sons of Mil encountered the three Tuatha De Danann goddesses Banba, Fotla and Eriu each of whom asked that Ireland be named after her in turn. This was granted and then the sons of Mil met their respective husbands MacCuill, Mac Ceacht and Mac Gréine.

These three gods asked that they be allowed to keep the kingship of Ireland for a mere three days more and that during that time the sons of Mil should return to their ships and wait off the Irish coast a distance of nine waves. They agreed to this but while sitting out in their ships the Tuatha De Danann druids caused a great storm to spring up which swept them further out to sea and was in danger of swamping their ships until Amhairghin sang a magic verse which calmed the seas and they were able to return. In a fit of anger Donn threatened to kill everyone in Ireland once they arrived there and, at this, the wind blew up again and he and his brother Aireach were drowned. The surviving sons of Mil eventually landed in Ireland at the Boyne estuary and after a great battle against the Tuatha De Danann at Tailtiu (Teltown in Co. Meath) they were victorious. From them it is claimed are descended the present day inhabitants of Ireland and Scotland, known collectively as the Gaels.

The magic song which Amhairghin sang to calm the waves is very similar to the shape-shifting tales recounted by Fionntán and Tuán and this for some reason seems to have been an integral part of assuming the kingship and sovereignty of Ireland. A version of this strange song has come down to us today and is as follows:

I am a wind of the sea,
I am a wave of the sea,
I am a sound of the sea,
I am an ox of seven fights,
I am a stag of seven tines,
I am a hawk on a cliff,
I am a tear of the sun,
I am fair among flowers,
I am a boar,
I am a salmon in a pool,
I am a lake on a plain,
I am a hill of poetry,
I am a battle-waging spear,
I am a god who forms fire for a head.
Who makes clear the ruggedness of the mountains?
Who but myself knows where the sun shall set?
Who foretells the ages of the moon?
Who brings the cattle from the House of Tethra and segregates them?
For whom but me will the fish of the laughing ocean be making welcome?
Who shapes the weapons from hill to hill?
Invoke, People of the Sea, invoke the poet, that he may compose a spell for you.
For I, the druid, :who set out letters in Ogham,
I, who part combatants,
I will approach the rath of the Sidhe to seek a cunning poet that together we may
concoct incantations.
I am wind of the sea.

From this amazing diversity of ideas and pseudo-history mingling with known factual history we can begin to see why the Irish mythology is so vast and so complex. This brief look at the Celtic peoples and the Irish ‘coming into being’ legends should also serve to point out that it is useless to talk in the all-encompassing terms of ‘the Celts’ or ‘Celtic’ as these words must be refined before we can even begin to understand just what people are being referred to and, consequently, which pantheon of deities is involved and which corpus of legends surrounding them, and of course, which magical system is being discussed.

This article first appeared in SEANCHAS, Volume 4, no. 2 which was published in 1992 by CELTIC RESEARCH & FOLKLORE SOCIETY, Spion Kop, Lamlash, Isle of Arran, Scotland. ISSN 0956-3873.

Vampires are a subject that has fascinated many people through the centuries. This is particularly true among people interested in ancient Sumer. A number of books have touched upon the topic, but none have gone greatly into depth on the subject. The reason for this is that vampires are not a particularly dignified subject for Assyriologists to focus upon. Neo-pagans on the other hand have the interest, but tend not to be qualified to write much on the subject.

The Sumerians obviously did not have the word vampire. This would come much later in a region somewhat to the north that would have had no contact with the Sumerians, but who might have had contact with the descendants of the Sumerians. They did however have the concept of demonic creatures that consumed the blood of the living.

The concept of a vampire is a vague one. It is agreed in some circles that a mythological creature is a vampire if they drink blood. On the other hand a lion will readily drink blood. Sometimes cannibalistic creatures are lumped in with vampires. The main difference here is that these drink the blood of the dead rather than the living.

Confusingly it is not agreed upon in all circles that a vampire needs to drink blood. Some creatures that draw energy from individuals are also categorized as vampires. These creatures are definitely parasitic, but are they vampires?

Nergal

In form, this god is strong and powerful. He is sometimes described as a warrior, and other times described as a dragon. He is always described as having horns, but this is universal across all middle eastern gods, not just Nergal in particular. Being an underworld god he has some bird like characteristics. These would chiefly include claws.

Nergal is best known as an underworld god, but he worked his way slowly up to that point. He started out as a guardian of the underworld standing next to his twin brother. The image of Nergal and his brother was remembered when the Babylonians developed astronomy, and is still remembered today as the Greek constellation of Gemini.

The chief duty of the twins would have been to cut to pieces any, be they mortal, ghost, demon or god, who attempted to force their way into the underworld. They would likely have stood in front of the gates of the fortress of Ganzer.

Interestingly this might not be the only time that the Greeks adopted Nergal for their astronomy. After Nergal’s time as a guardian of the gates of the underworld he became a war god. Here he led demons and mortals in battle against their enemies. As such he was a god of disease and plagues, leading his demons in bloody battles just as he led mortal leaders.

It is as a war god that we have some of our best evidence of blood offerings. Here he is described as being a dragon covered in gore who drinks the blood of the living. Elsewhere in the texts he is said to be offered secret blood rituals.

He is perhaps better known as a war god by his Akkadian / Babylonian name Erra. There are strong arguments that he might have inspired the Greek Aries, though there is no doubt that the Greek god was a rather different god from the Mesopotamian one. For their star charts, the Greeks adopted the Babylonian star charts almost whole cloth. As such the constellation of Aries at least peripherally remembers Nergal.

After the death of the bull of heaven, Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, took Nergal as her husband. There is obviously more to this story, an entire myth in fact, but from a vampiric point of view what matters is that Nergal refused to bow down before death, and that he became the second most powerful individual in the underworld. What this means is that it is he who leads the undead and blood drinking ghosts.

The Dead

When a mortal dies they are placed in a grave along with several statues. The grave provides a gate for the dead and these statues to physically enter Kur, the underworld. Once in the Kur the statues and the dead are given motion and substance.

The dead must pass through seven gates as they travel into the underworld. Once there they can be granted residence in the great city of Urugal, reside in the wasteland like areas, or anywhere in between. The underworld was not considered the ideal place to be. The worst parts could be very bad indeed. The Greek idea of Hades can be linked to the Sumerian underworld.

Don’t think of this as heaven and hell. The worst areas are not set aside for evil doers, but are rather set aside for those who did not properly prepare themselves for the afterlife. This area was not a punishment, but rather a bad place to be. Likewise the city of Urugal was the home of Ereshkigal and those who worked diligently in the service of the gods. Unlike the link between Hades and Kur, there is no evidence of any connection between the Elysian Fields and the great city of Urugal.

Once in the underworld, the dead could, through extraordinary circumstances, return to the living. Should this happen, they will be returned to life as vampires. There are a small handful of myths involving the underworld where the gates of Ganzer are threatened from within or without. It is from here that we learn something of the vampiric nature of the dead.

The true threat of this is that the dead would pour out in numbers greater than the living. This number would be increased by the statuary servants buried along with them. They would consume the blood of the living and, with the gates open, increase their numbers this way.

The thirst for blood here is a way to retain a link to the land of the living. The dead of the poorer portions of the underworld are also said to consume dirt. This is likely a link to the grave, and the eternal sustenance of the dead.

Occasionally the dead are not able to make it into the underworld. A demon might cause the body to fail, but it might fail in its effort kill them. This now presents a body in a grave that is not truly dead. It has a trapped soul and a trapped demon.

This would be the perfect recipe for a Sumerian vampire. They might feed upon blood to retain a connection to the living. They might also seek to possess and kill a victim in order to hitch a ride into the underworld when they are buried. They might even have unfinished business with the living world.

Gidim

Their name can be translated to encroaching darkness, hungry ghost, demon, or a hand full of other similar titles. The specifics are different, but the general points are the same. These are spirits who have the ability to consume the living in some way.

Not all dead who return to drink the blood of the living do so as a physical being. Gidim are walking shadows that consume the living leaving bruising upon the neck. They can possess a mortal by entering the ear, and so powerful charms are occasionally placed upon earrings to protect against them.

Gidim are ghostly demons who are often prevented from entering the land of the dead for one reason or another. This might be simply because they cannot offer gifts to each of the gate keepers, or be something far worse such as a profound hatred of some or all of the living. The journey back to the land of the living is difficult, but it can be done by a determined spirit, or on certain sacred days.

Not all Gidim are hostile towards the living. In the month of Ne Izi Gar ghosts return to the land of the living to visit their departed loved ones. They are welcomed with a number of festivals at this time. Also at this time the Gidim of hostile sorcerers are said to return. These ghosts can take the living and cause them several kinds of harm.

Two things seem to separate good Gidim from harmful ones. The harmful ones drink blood, and stay around longer. This makes sense when you consider that the dead need blood, the essence of life, to retain a link to the world of the living.

A final thing that should be remembered when looking at the Gidim are the sorcerers. These fall under those capable of great harm. They are certainly considered to have powerful spirits, but they can’t be considered to be universally harmful. In their way they typify all Mesopotamian demons. They are not good or evil by nature, but rather do what they do because of who they are as individuals.

Galla

These demons were never alive. Not in the same way as mortals that is to say. They have no concept of mercy, and cannot be bribed. They do have a concept of justice however. Their goal seems to be to get as many dead for the underworld as they can by whatever means they can.

This form of demon may not have a concept of mercy, but they do know the meaning of justice. Their duty is to maintain the laws of the underworld by whatever means they can. It is their duty to prevent physical escapes from the underworld, to maintain the laws protecting the rights of the dead in the underworld, and carry out the will of Ereshkigal.

Initially it would seem that these demons would be against anything vampiric, however according to at least one professional Sumerian linguist they do exhibit vampiric characteristics. This is backed up by their behavior in the myth of the death of the god Ningishzida. Also, as underworld demons, they are going to gain vampiric characteristics simply by association.

Galla have been described as manifestations of the underworld itself. Being pieces of Kur would, in a way, make them undead. This interpretation is debatable however, as the Sumerians didn’t share the Hindu concept of aspects.

The Galla demons are occasionally rebellious. They were breaking the law of the gods in the aforementioned Ningishzida myth. They were promptly punished for their transgression. Even so, when they were doing their job, they were valued members of the community.

Galla demons were not considered to be lesser demons in any way. They were dangerous, and occasionally rebellious. In a way they were something like bounty hunters. Even so, they were one of a few types of demon that were welcome to eat at the table of Enlil.

Maskim [Mashkimu]

Like the Galla, Maskim were underworld demons. Like the Galla, they were integral in the upkeep of the laws of the underworld. Unlike the Galla, they were tied more closely to the laws of the underworld than to the underworld itself.

Maskim is not actually their proper name. It was an early translation used, presumably by Simon, in modern necromantic texts. Their name would more properly be pronounced Mashkimu. They are not Lovecraftian, but they would be at home in the Cthulhu mythos.

Unlike many other vampiric creatures, the Maskim do not need to resort to sneaking up on their prey. Maskim can simply rip down the walls of a house and consume all that they find inside. They are demons of a much higher order than their underworld kinsmen.

The word Maskim literally translates to ‘inspector’, referring to their duty as netherworld overseers. It is their job to make sure that the laws of the underworld are obeyed even by other demons. The Galla have been known from time to time to do things that serve the will of the underworld itself above the proper order of the universe as set forth by its ruler and the other gods.

Like anything else with too close a relation to the underworld, they came to have vampiric traits. It should be noted that they were only mentioned as drinkers of blood in the later Babylonian texts. This means that their blood drinking characteristics might have actually been a blurring of the lines between Galla demons and the Mashkimu.

As with the Galla, the Mashkimu were welcome to eat at the table of Enlil. This is interesting as Enlil was the head of the pantheon and not an underworld demon at all. He was in fact a wind god associated more with spirits of the air.

Lilith and Lilitu demons

Lilith is perhaps the most famous of the Mesopotamian demons. She is presently associated with white wolf games, an all female rock concert, immorality among Jewish women, and a few other things here and there. The Lilith we have any evidence of is something more.

Lilith is the Babylonian name simply identifying her as a specific Lilitu demon. Lilitu demons first show up in the Gilgamesh myths. In the Sumerian version of these myths no specific demoness is mentioned, but in the later Babylonian versions she is always called Lilith.

She is a Lilitu demon, but what is a Lilitu demon? Lilitu demons tell us a lot simply in their name. “Lil” means wind, “itu” means moon. Moon wind together, however, means owl. The Mesopotamian screech owl is a creature that glides silently on the wind with a moon like, disturbingly human, face. They are disturbingly large and carry off the young of various creatures.

In Gilgamesh, the Liltu demoness was living in a tree and acting much like a harpy. This type of wind spirit is a female who preys upon the lives of babies and expecting mothers. Gilgamesh frightened it away with his enchanted Ax of the Road after killing a snake monster.

Lilitu were one group of a triumvirate of demons. Lilitu and Ardat Lili, meaning maiden lilu, are female groups of demons, and Lilu are male. Each of them preys upon a select type of victim. The shared lil prefix in each of their names tells that they are each wind demons.

When Abraham left the city of Ur in the eighteenth century BCE or potentially slightly earlier, he took some of these myths with him. Lilith became known as the first wife of Adam in this version. She wished to be dominant over him in the bedroom and was punished.

In this version, Lilith was told that she would have her demon children killed in mass numbers. By kidnapping human children and letting them be killed instead, she can protect her children. This story had a moral in it. It told women that terrible things can happen if they weren’t so submissive to their men. It also encouraged protection of children from Lilith.

So what does all this have to do with vampires? Nothing actually. In Assyriology there is one name that comes to the top of any work on Assyriology, and that name is Kramer. In his early work he translated Lilith as being a vampire. It is an easy mistake to make, as there were quite a few vampire demons in Mesopotamia. This translation was proven false by the only translator who was better than the early work of Kramer. The later work of Kramer corrected the mistake in translation.

Assyriology is a relatively obscure field, so how did Lilith get associated with vampires? It happened with the publishing of the world of darkness role playing games by Whitewolf™. You know the “No role play” rule in most vampire communities? Same thing. Someone must have read the obscure little line in one of Kramer’s books.

In white wolf’s game books Lilith was the supernatural creature that cried blood and turned Cane brother of Able into a vampire. There are any number of things wrong with this from the point of view of biblical theology, but white wolf produced games and not theology text books. This last fact is sadly news to some people. [editors note: Most role play manuals make poor source material for any mythology – so please, consult actual mythological source books.]

Lamashtu and Pazuzu

For the most part demons are not inherently evil. They usually serve a valuable place in the order of the universe. A demon of the underworld might serve to cause people to die, but also serve to usher them into the underworld, or protect the rights of the dead.

Lamashtu was different. She was not doing harmful things because they needed to be done. She also did not do helpful things. She did what she did because she wanted to do harmful and destructive things. She didn’t act on the behest of the gods, but acted on her own initiative. Although the Sumerians did not have the concept of individuals who were evil by their very nature, she would have come close.

Lamashtu was not strictly a vampire. Like Lilith, she was primarily a being who attacked women and infants. There is one text amongst the early incantations that mentioned the drinking of the blood of infants. On the other hand she also strangles babies and causes chaos.

She was not specifically a demon either, but more of a particularly old goddess associated with causing destruction. She was the daughter of An, making her a sister to the head of the pantheon. She even had children of her own in the underworld.

Her nemesis was the protective demon like god Pazuzu. He was a fearsome looking demon with claws and wings who protected pregnant women and their babies. He was one of many protective demons, and one of the more powerful ones.

Pregnant women would wear images of him around their necks above their wombs to protect against Lamashtu. For some reason the creators of the Exorcist films decided to use him for their intrinsically evil demon. Bad research strikes again.

Montague Summers’ Muttaliku

The word Muttaliku, according to Montague Summers roughly a hundred years ago, is an interesting word that means wanderer. He mentions it once in his entire book on Vampires. Thanks to his single mentioning of the word, it has shown up on many lists of vampires with just as oblique a reference. Usually something along the lines of Muttaliku, an Assyrian form of vampire.

The trouble is Summers did not list his source text. Modern scholarly texts would have done this and as such be a better resource for those who would have more information later. That is the nature of scholarly sources. They are only useful if they build upon what has come before and help those who will come after.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a different era for the study of ancient near eastern texts. Muttaliku might actually be vampiric in nature, but it is nearly imposable to tell because the word Muttaliku itself is a bad translation.

Let us take the term Akhkharu. This is another word that tends to be translated as a type of vampire. It’s supposed to be a middle eastern word, but it sounds rather Egyptian. Akh is ancient Egyptian for a sort of spirit, and kharu is similar to an Egyptian word for one of their neighbors. This might make it an Egyptian word for foreign ghosts or demons. The trouble is that there is no basis for this interpretation.

Ahhazu might be a much better translation of the word. Even that translation might be a misinterpretation. Ahhazu is an obscure Mesopotamian demon or type of demon that may or may not have consumed blood.

The trouble with using old texts is that there is a difference between an ancient text, and an outdated translation of an ancient text. Even a good translation of a confusing text might be hard to understand.

Sometimes old sources are the only things that are available. When they aren’t it is important to get up to date translations and to look in scholarly sources. They might be a little dry to read at times, but they are far more rewarding to read if you are seeking information.

The Month of Ghosts

In the Sumerian calendar there is one month where the dead have another shot at visiting the land of the living. This is Ne Izi Gar, the Month of Ghosts, the month when torches are lit. It is an important festival month when a special gate opens up to allow the dead to visit the living.

Traditionally a meal would be prepared with an empty chair for the dead to come to visit. This would be a happy occasion. The dead would be honored and given a feast, and there would be other little events that would occur through the month.

There was also a down side to having a vast number of ghosts around. Not all those that die are missed. Some of the dead were feared and dreaded in life. Some of those who were feared and dreaded retained a measure of this power in death. They had enemies who still walked among the living and the ability to do them harm.

Once a year, roughly in August according to the Nippurian calendar, these dead would be released to do harm to the living. There were special precautions that could be taken at this time to prevent the harmful effects of ghosts. Special ear jewelry was used to ward off possession, and special spells could be used to banish ghosts that were more feared.

A word on the laws of hospitality

The Sumerian pantheon is rather unique in that there is a highly organized social structure among the gods and demons. There is even a code of laws that are punishable with various levels of severity. One of the most important of these laws is hospitality. This is the law that protects a mortal and their guests within their own home from various forms of harm.

In the mortal world hospitality means that a host must provide for their guest, and that the guest must behave themselves in the home of the host. Typically the host must feed and protect their guest, and the guest must never ask for anything. Interestingly a host who has granted hospitality to a hated enemy will protect them from any kind of harm.

Gods and demons also observe this in various ways. Demons, including vampires, must ask permission to enter a home. If they offer hospitality they will not be able to harm their guest so long as the guest observes the rules.

The laws of the gods and the demons are strictly enforced with various checks and balances. This ties in to the most famous bane of vampires: Sunlight. Utu was the patron god of the sun. This doesn’t mean that the Sumerians thought that he was the sun, simply the god of it. Utu, Shamash in Akkadian, was also the god of law and justice.

Not all undead, blood drinking ghosts, and blood drinking demons, are breaking the laws set forth by the gods, but many are. If they come out during the day and are hit by a beam of sunlight, then they will be seen by Utu. It should also be noted that Utu is one of the seven who decree fate, and as such one of the seven most powerful gods in the entire pantheon.

As such it has nothing to do with good or evil per say, more something to do with legal violations. Should a demonic creature be given what they want, let us say blood, legally, then there will be no problem at all. If on the other hand a Galla demon were to try to take someone’s life who wasn’t supposed to die, then they might be punished in kind.

The lovely little town of Knittlingen, near the Black Forrest in West Germany, is noted far-and-wide as the original residence of the famed Dr. Johannes Faustus. A plaque in the small but exquisite museum devoted to the facts and legends concerning Dr. Faust tells us that, although alchemy has often been considered a pseudo-science based on the pretense that gold could be made from other metals, it is now known that, in reality, it was a spiritual art having as its aim the psychological transformation of the alchemist himself. This public statement, viewed daily by large numbers of visitors, demonstrates most impressively the rehabilitated image alchemy has acquired in recent decades. This positive change is due in large measure to the work of one remarkable man: Carl Gustav Jung.

When Jung published his first major work on alchemy at the end of World War II, most reference books described this discipline as nothing more than a fraudulent and inefficient forerunner of modern chemistry. Today, more than twenty-five years after Jung’s death, alchemy is once again a respected subject of both academic and popular interest, and alchemical terminology is used with great frequency in textbooks of depth-psychology and other disciplines. It may be said without exaggeration that the contemporary status of alchemy owes its very existence to the psychological wizard of Küsnacht. Take away the monumental contribution of C.G. Jung, and most modern research concerning this fascinating subject falls like a house of cards; to speak of alchemy in our age and not mention him could be likened to discoursing on Occultism without noting the importance of Helena P. Blavatsky, or discussing religious studies in contemporary American universities without paying homage to Mircea Eliade.

Jung’s “first love” among esoteric systems was Gnosticism. From the earliest days of his scientific career until the time of his death, his dedication to the subject of Gnosticism was relentless. As early as August, 1912, Jung intimated in a letter to Freud that he had an intuition that the essentially feminine-toned archaic wisdom of the Gnostics, symbolically called Sophia, was destined to re-enter modern Western culture by way of depth-psychology. Subsequently, he stated to Barbara Hannah that when he discovered the writings of the ancient Gnostics, “I felt as if I had at last found a circle of friends who understood me.”

The circle of ancient friends was a fragile one, however. Very little reliable, first-hand information was available to Jung within which he could have found the world and spirit of such past Gnostic luminaries as Valentinus, Basilides, and others. The fragmentary, and possibly mendacious, accounts of Gnostic teachings and practices appearing in the works of such heresy-hunting church fathers as Irenaeus and Hippolytus were a far cry from the wealth of archetypal lore available to us today in the Nag Hammadi collection. Of primary sources, the remarkable Pistis Sophia was one of very few available to Jung in translation, and his appreciation of this work was so great that he made a special effort to seek out the translator, the then aged and impecunious George R. S. Mead, in London to convey to him his great gratitude.1 Jung continued to explore Gnostic lore with great diligence, and his own personal matrix of inner experience became so affinitized to Gnostic imagery that he wrote the only published document of his great transformational crisis, The Seven Sermons to the Dead, using purely Gnostic terminology and mythologems of the system of Basilides.2

In all this devoted study, Jung was disturbed by one principal difficulty: The ancient Gnostic myths and traditions were some seventeen or eighteen hundred years old, and no living link seemed to exist that might join them to Jung’s own time. (There is some minimal and obscure evidence indicating that Jung was aware of a few small and secretive Gnostic groups in France and Germany, but their role in constituting such a link did not seem firmly enough established.) As far as Jung could discern, the tradition that might have connected the Gnostics with the present seemed to have been broken. However, his intuition (later justified by painstaking research) disclosed to him that the chief link connecting later ages with the Gnostics was in fact none other than alchemy. While his primary interest at this time was Gnosticism, he was already aware of the relevance of alchemy to his concerns. Referring to his intense inner experiences occurring between 1912 and 1919 he wrote:

First I had to find evidence for the historical prefiguration of my own inner experiences. That is to say, I had to ask myself, “Where have my particular premises already occurred in history?” If I had not succeeded in finding such evidence, I would never have been able to substantiate my ideas. Therefore, my encounter with alchemy was decisive for me, as it provided me with the historical basis which I hitherto lacked.3

In 1926 Jung had a remarkable dream. He felt himself transported back into the seventeenth century, and saw himself as an alchemist, engaged in the opus, or great work of alchemy. Prior to this time, Jung, along with other psychoanalysts, was intrigued and taken aback by the tragic fate of Herbert Silberer, a disciple of Freud, who in 1914 published a work dealing largely with the psychoanalytic implications of alchemy. Silberer, who upon proudly presenting his book to his master Freud, was coldly rebuked by him, became despondent and ended his life by suicide, thus becoming what might be called the first martyr to the cause of a psychological view of alchemy.

Now it all came together, as it were. The Gnostic Sophia was about to begin her triumphal return to the arena of modern thought, and the psychological link connecting her and her modern devotees would be the long despised, but about to be rehabilitated, symbolic discipline of alchemy. The recognition had come. Heralded by a dream, the role of alchemy as the link connecting ancient Gnosticism with modern psychology, as well as Jung’s role in reviving this link, became apparent. As Jung was to recollect later:

[Alchemy] represented the historical link with Gnosticism, and . . . a continuity therefore existed between past and present. Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed the bridge on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.4

Richard Wilhelm and the Chinese Connection

In 1928 the eminent German Sinologist, Richard Wilhelm, recently returned after a long period of residence in China, sent Jung a manuscript of a translation of an alchemical treatise of Taoist origin and requested that Jung might write a psychological commentary on the text. This work, subsequently known as The Secret of the Golden Flowercatapulted C.G. Jung into the very midst of alchemical themes and interests. His studies disclosed that Chinese alchemy, just like the alchemy of the West, deals primarily with the transformational symbolism of the human soul. Although the ancient Taoists postulated that the quest for immortality was the central work of alchemy, their “Golden Flower” of immortality is not substantially different from the “Stone of the Philosophers,” which is the supreme objective of Western practitioners of the Great Art.

Not only was there a rainbow bridge discernible that connected modern depth-psychology with the Gnostics of old, but there was also a similar bridge linking these Western traditions and disciplines with the Taoist sages of the ancient Middle Kingdom. While the bridge linking the past with the present might be envisioned historically, the bridge joining East with West might be seen to consist of archetypal rather than historical substance. As Richard Wilhelm himself came to state:

Chinese wisdom and Dr. Jung have both descended independently of one another into the depths of man’s collective psyche and have there come upon realities which look so alike because thy are equally anchored in truth. This would prove that the truth can be reached from any standpoint if only one digs deep enough for it, and the congruity between the Swiss scientist and the old Chinese sages only goes to show that both are right because both have found the truth.5

And now, we might ask at this point, might this truth be defined? It is a psychic fact that the opposites arising from the dark matter of the birth-agonies of the human soul confront each other in the alchemical vessel of spiritual transformation (in Chinese alchemy frequently envisioned as the human body) and after many battles, woundings, and indeed deaths, ultimately come to unite in an indestructible state in the reconciliation of the binaries. Thus the lunar Queen and solar King (represented in China by the symbols of the Yin and Yang) are living presences within us, heralding the promise of the Philosophers’ Stone or the Golden Flower which we are destined to become ourselves. “The Chinese Connection” thus revealed to Jung that alchemy is based upon universal archetypal principles which are of equal relevance to ancient Gnostics, Taoist wise men, and modern psychologists. It is thus that Jung found in the symbolism of alchemy one of the most potent connecting links between the psyches of Eastern and Western peoples. In the conclusion of his collaborative work with Wilhelm may be found the following words: “The purpose of my commentary is to attempt to build a bridge of psychological understanding between East and West.”

Alchemical Redemption

Jung’s dreams in 1925, 1926, and thereafter frequently found him in ancient houses surrounded by alchemical codices of great beauty and mystery. Inspired by such images, Jung amassed a library on the great art which represents probably one of the finest private collections in this field. In addition he secured photocopies of a large number of rare works which repose in various collections the world over. I well remember being told by the late Dr. Henry Drake, Vice President of the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, how Jung secured copies of the extensive alchemical collection of the Society in the 1940’s, and expressed his feelings to Manly P. Hall of that Society concerning the valuable use to which he had put these materials in his book Psychology and Alchemy. Jung’s collection of rare works on alchemy is still extant in his former house in Küsnacht, a suburb of Zurich.

When asked whether he valued any alchemical work above others, Jung was wont to single out first one then another according to its applicability to the theme being discussed. Aniela Jaffe stated that “fundamentally it was not the thoughts of individual alchemists that were of importance for Jung’s researches as much as the inexhaustible variety of their arcane images and descriptions, apparently so different yet all interrelated.”6 Anyone who has had the good fortune to observe some of the major alchemical codices in their original form and feast their eyes on the incredibly impressive imagery, pictured in vivid colors and fantastic shapes, will sympathize with Jung’s habit of meditating upon this imagery as an exercise in altered and expanded consciousness!

In 1935, after years of intense study and inner transformations, Jung presented some of his findings to the world for the first time. Needless to say this did not occur in some cold academic setting, but at the beautiful Villa Eranos, in Ascona. Surrounded by a splendid garden, elegant furnishings, fine wines and refreshments, the brilliant and distinguished guests of Madame Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn gathered to witness the unveiling of alchemy in its 20th Century psychological embodiment. In a lecture entitled “Dream Symbols and the Individuation Process” Jung traced the alchemical symbolism evident in the dreams of contemporary persons, thereby establishing that alchemy still lives in modern minds even as it did in ancient Alexandria or medieval Europe. A year later, at the same place, he lectured on “The Idea of Redemption in Alchemy.” The select audience was intrigued and enchanted. The time had assuredly come when the hermetic silence could be broken and the gnosis of alchemy could be made available to an increasing number. For seven more years Jung worked with great diligence, expanding and amplifying his researches into alchemy. His labors culminated in his chef d’oevre, published in 1944, and entitledPsychology and Alchemy. Even some seminal pronouncements related to alchemy in his address delivered in 1941, on the 400th anniversary of the death of the great Swiss alchemist, Paracelsus. This lecture, which was later expanded and included in the 13th volume of Jung’s Collected Works entitledAlchemical Studies, presents what is perhaps the clearest picture on record of Jung’s fundamental attitude toward alchemy.

The point frequently missed by students of Jung, but amply elucidated by him in his above noted address (published under the title “Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon”), concerns the topic of alchemy as a modality of redemption. With Paracelsus, Jung held that in human life we possess two sources of Gnosis, or salvific knowledge. One of these is Lumen Dei, the light proceeding from the unmanifest Godhead, the other is Lumen Naturae, the light hidden in matter and the forces of nature. While the Divine Light may be discerned and appreciated in revelation and in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Light of Nature needs to be released through alchemy before it can become fully operative. God redeems humanity, but nature needs to be redeemed by human alchemists, who are able to induce the process of transformation which alone is capable of liberating the light imprisoned in physical creation.

The cosmos, according to Paracelsus, contains the divine light or life, but this holy essence is enmeshed in a mechanical trap, presided over by a kind of demiurge, named by Paracelsus Hylaster (from hyle, “matter,” and astrum, “star”). The cosmic spider-god has spun a web within which the light, like an insect, is caught, until the alchemical process bursts the web. The web is none other than the consensus reality composed of the four elements of earth, water, fire and air, within which all creatures exist. The first operation of alchemy therefore addresses itself to the breaking up (torturing, bleeding, dismembering) of this confining structure and reducing it to a condition of creative chaos (massa confusa, prima materia). From this, in the process of transformation, the true, creative binaries emerge and begin their interaction designed to bring about the coniunctio or alchemical union. In this ultimate union, says Jung, the previously confined light is redeemed and brought to the point of its ultimate and redemptive fulfillment.

While these statements ostensibly refer to the material universe and to nature, Jung perceives in them a model or paradigm for the material and natural aspect of human nature as well. Under the guise of liberating the light confined in matter, the alchemists were endeavoring to redeem the spirit or psychic energy locked up in the body and psyche (the “natural man” of St. Paul) and thus make this energy available for the greater tasks of the spirit or spiritual man.

The roots of this thinking within both the Christian and the Hermetic gnosis are clearly acknowledged by Jung, who likens the imprisoned light to the primordial man of the Gnostics, the Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalah, and by association to the lost lightsparks of the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria. (The implications of this concept of alchemical redemption are many and impressive. On the one hand, it is clear that matter and the body are by no means to be equated with evil and darkness, while on the other hand, the pagan emphasis on a mere immersion of human consciousness in nature as advocated by some in our times under such slogans as “affirmation of life” and the “celebration of nature” reveals itself as a limited view to which alchemy may serve as a much needed corrective.)

Alchemical Eros

One of the most fascinating explorations of the psychological analogues of alchemy was given to us by Jung in a lengthy essay not usually classified as one of his alchemical writings, entitled The Psychology of the Transference. In this study Jung employed the ten pictures illustrating the opus of alchemical transormation contained in a classic called Rosarium Philosophorum (Rosary of the Philosophers), where the dual powers of the “King” and “Queen” are shown to undergo a number of phases of their own mystico-erotic relationship and eventually unite in a new, androgynous being, called in the text “the noble Empress”. The term “transference is used by Jung as a psychological synonym for love, which in interpersonal relations as well as in depth-psychological analysis serves the role of the great healer of the sorrows and injuries of living.

The series of images begins with that of the mercurial fountain, symbolizing the aroused energy of transformation and continues with the meeting of the King and Queen, first fully clad and later having relinquished their garments. The lovers thus confront each other with their personae and defenses, but proceed to a meeting in “naked truth”. The partners then immerse themselves in the alchemical bath, thus allowing the force of love to engulf their conscious egos, blotting out rational and mundane considerations. While in this state of passionate engulfment the psychosexual union (coniunctio) takes place. But, contrary expectations, this union, which initially brought forth a newly formed androgynous being, results in death. The spiritual result of love is not viable and, having expired, undergoes decomposition.

It is at this point that the force of commitment to the process (though not necessarily to a particular partner) becomes all-important. By not abandoning the transformational work, the soul of the dead androgyne ascends to heaven, i.e., to a higher level of consciousness, while the body is washed in celestial dew. Soon the departed soul returns to its earthly body, and the reanimated corpse stands in its full, numinous glory for all to see. A new being is born which is the promised fruit of love, the transformed consciousness of the lovers, formed of the opposites, which are now welded into an inseparable imperishable wholeness. The alchemy of love has reached its true and triumphant culmination.

In The Psychology of the Transference, Jung has shared with the world his uniquely practical insight not only into the psychological mechanism of love but into the process of the reconciliation of all opposites – emotive, intellectual, physical, and metaphysical. Far more readily understood than his definitive treatise Psychology and Alchemy, this disquisition on the Alchemy of Eros is one of the most lucid and concise treatments of the process of unitive transformation. Published in 1945, it is not only a worthy successor to his earlier work, but also an excellent primer of the psychological approach to alchemy. In love, as in psychological growth, the key to success is the ability to endure the tension of the opposites without abandoning the process, even if the process and its result appear to have been brought to naught. In our impatient age, replete with divorce, fickleness, and the pursuit of change, these psycho-alchemical insights are very much needed indeed!

The Alchemical Sophia

Jung’s two greatest works on Alchemy are Psychology and Alchemy and Mysterium Coniunctionis, the latter representing his final summing up of the implications of his long preoccupation with alchemy. In this last summary of his insights on the subject, influenced in part by his collaboration with the Nobel Prize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, the old Jung envisions a great psycho-physical mystery to which the alchemists of old gave the name of unus mundus(one world). At the root of all being, so he intimates, there is a state wherein physicality and spirituality meet in a transgressive union. Synchronistic phenomena, and many more as yet unexplained mysteries of physical and psychological nature, appear to proceed from this unitive condition. It is more than likely that this mysterious condition is the true home of the archetypes as such, which merely project themselves into the realm of the psyche, but in reality abide elsewhere. While the tensional relationship of the opposites remains the great operational mechanism of manifest life and of transformation, this relationship exists within the context of a unitary world-model wherein matter and spirit, King and Queen, appear as aspects of a psychoid realm of reality.

The ever-repeated charge of radical dualism leveled against Gnostics and their alchemical kin is thus reduced to a misunderstanding by this last, and perhaps greatest, insight of Jung. The workings of the cosmos, both physical and psychic, are characterized by duality, but this principle is relative to the underlying reality of the unus mundus. Dualism and monism are thus revealed not as mutually contradictory and exclusive but as complimentary aspects of reality. It is a curious paradox that this revolutionary insight, impressively portrayed by Jung in Mysterium Coniunctionis, has received relatively little attention from psychologists and metaphysicians alike.

Alchemical interest and perception permeate many of Jung’s numerous writings in addition to those devoted primarily to the subject. His work Psychology and Religion: West and East, as well as numerous lectures delivered at the Eranos conferences, all utilize the alchemical model as a matrix for his teachings. Time and again he pointed out the affinities and contrasts between alchemical figures and those of Christianity, demonstrating a sort of mirror-like analogy not only between the stone of the philosophers and the image of Christ, but between alchemy and Christianity themselves. Alchemy, said Jung, stands in a compensatory relationship to mainstream Christianity, rather like a dream does to the conscious attitudes of the dreamer. The Stone of alchemy is in many respects the stone rejected by the builders of Christian culture, demanding recognition and reincorporation into the building itself.

It is here that some of the considerations outlined at the outset of our present study appear once more. Alchemy is not a phenomenon sui generis, but rather a phenomenon of attempted assimilation proceeding from Gnosticism – or at least so Jung believed. Even the chief sacrament of Christendom, the Holy Eucharist or Mass, was regarded by Jung as an alchemical work connected with a Third Century Gnostic alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis, in whom he placed the historical point of the convergence of Gnosticism and alchemy. (These considerations were explained by Jung in his Transformation Symbolism in the Mass, first published in the Eranos Yearbook 1944/45, and later included in Psychology and Western Religion, Princeton University Press, 1984.) Years later, one of Jung’s academic associates, Prof. Gilles Quispel, came to coin a phrase reflecting Jung’s point of view. “Alchemy,” the Dutch scholar said, “is the Yoga of the Gnostics.”

Perhaps one of the most significant contributions along these lines was given to us by Jung’s singularly insightful disciple Marie-Louise von Franz, who devoted herself to the translation and explanation of a treatise first discovered by Jung entitled Aurora Consurgens and attributed to St Thomas Aquinas. This renowned saint, so the legend states, had a vision of the Sophia of God after meditating on the Song of Songs of Solomon and, following the command received in the vision, wrote this alchemical treatise. The Aurora differs from most other alchemical works inasmuch as its format is predominantly religious and filled with biblical references, and even more importantly, because it represents the alchemical opus as a process whereby the feminine wisdom Sophiamust be liberated. Written in seven poetic but scholarly chapters, the treatise traces the liberation of Sophia from confinement by way of the alchemical phases of transformation.

It is thus through the agency of a brilliant woman disciple that the great project envisioned by Jung in 1912 came to a renewed emphasis. Led by the rediscovered words of the “angelic doctor” Aquinas, contemporary students of religion and psychology were confronted once again with the Gnostic task of alchemy. Published in German in 1957 and in English in 1966, Marie-Louise von Franz’s work brought Jung’s gnostic-alchemical vision in to full view once more. While at the individual level alchemy may assuredly be concerned with the redemption of the Lumen Naturae concealed in the psycho-physiological recesses of the human personality, the Aurora and also Jung’s Answer to Job appear to point to a yet larger and more universal opus.

Crying from the depths of the chaos of this world, the wisdom-woman Sophia calls out to the alchemists of our age. Depth-psychology has indeed served as one of the principal avenues through which this redemptive project has been made known. The time may be approaching, and may in fact have come already, when potential alchemists in various disciplines and spiritual traditions may address themselves to this universal task of alchemical liberation. In 1950 Jung was greatly encouraged when Pope Pius XII used several manifestly alchemical allusions, such as “heavenly marriage”, in Apostolic Constitution,“Munificentissimus Deus”, the official document declaring the dogma of the assumption of the Virgin Mary, (the Catholic Sophia). In our time alchemy has come into its own, and beginning with the most recent two decades Gnosticism has begun its return journey also. The stone that the builders rejected is moving ever closer to the structure of Western culture.

In the garden of Jung’s country home in Bollingen stands a large cube-shaped stone inscribed by his own hand with magical and alchemical symbols. In his last revelatory dream prior to his death, Jung saw a huge round stone engraved with the words “And this shall be a sign unto you of Wholeness and Oneness”. Perhaps these signs of the wondrous stone of the great work will serve to remind the many whose lives and souls were touched by the Swiss Wizard, of the great work to be done, the great miracle to be accomplished. It is to be hoped that such an awakening of mindfulness will please Carl Gustav Jung in the far land to which he journeyed, and that it will assist those who are still in this sub-lunar world in their search for the quintessence, the stone of the philosophers and the supreme good.

Notes

Information concerning this visit was given to the writer in a private interview by Prof. Gilles Quispel.

For material on Jung’s Gnostic interests and on the Sermons, the reader is referred to the author’s work The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, (Quest Books, 1982).

“We are what we eat”. A well-worn phrase, but a true one. Our physical constitution depends absolutely on the provision from external sources of all of the various nutrients – be they water, protein, fat, carbohydrate, mineral or vitamin – that our body requires both for short term metabolism and for long term growth, repair and adaptation.

Similarly, although less obviously, we are what we breath – the constant exchange of air via lungs and bloodstream internalizes, binds or solubilizes and distributes our gaseous environment throughout our body as a constant and essential process, maintaining appropriate pH balance, partial pressures and oxidative potential both inside and outside every cell.

Less obvious still, but just as inevitable and essential for the maintenance of the body, is the constant exchange of etheric energy – of “chi”, “prana” or “num” between the internal and the external environment. Much of the focus of holistic therapeutics is on extending our awareness of the body beyond the biochemical, biomechanical model, embracing the reality of each person as an interwoven complex of body, mind and spirit, with patterns of health and dis-ease moving between and influencing each level, the “above and below” mirroring and patterning each other and allowing powerful healing to occur throughout the system with even the gentlest and least intrusive of therapeutic attention.

The mystery traditions hold that spirit moves into matter for self-expression, experience of all manner of relationship, and consequent self awareness, development and evolution. Patterns and energy forms held by the individual spirit are expressed from the higher vibrational bodies through the increasingly dense levels of consciousness down into the mental, emotional, etheric and finally physical bodies, where the soul can experience itself in an intense and inevitably self-reflective fashion. Imbalances and traumas held in any of the vibrational bodies will gradually move into matter, becoming manifest in the physical body and the outer worldly life where issues can be experienced and interacted with in a tangible form. Healing can therefore often be most effectively directed towards the source of the trauma and imbalance rather than at the more obvious, outer level, and herein lies the virtue of therapeutic strategies that address the more subtle, patterning levels of the human consciousness complex. Ultimately, all levels can be brought into balance through healing directed towards the subtle energies of the spirit itself, although this may in some cases involve a longer and less immediately dramatic shift in outer circumstances than the “magic bullets” of a more symptomatically-oriented approach. These concepts are no longer new to us, and the language of holism as applied to the individual is becoming more widespread and sophisticated. We are still more culturally conscious and skilled with the relationship between body and mind than we are with the interface with spirit however, and this is especially true in the context of environmental parameters influencing health.

It is not sufficient to look at the individual alone and out of context with their environment when addressing health, healing and wellness. We exist in relationship to every aspect of our lives and environment – to place, to circumstance and to other people. Biological membranes are semi-permeable. There is no real isolation from that which is around us – rather a constant exchange occurs. We are what we eat – nutrition is an essential and grossly overlooked aspect of healthcare and wellness strategies. We are what we breath. These things we understand and embrace, even though we may be lazy in acting on their implications. But the third element of spirit – elusive and often given only lip-service even in allegedly holistic therapeutic models, is almost entirely neglected in the environmental context. Metaphysically speaking, the body of the earth is no different from the body of a person. That is to say, as well as having a tangible, physical body, it also has an etheric body, an emotional body, a mental body, and higher spiritual bodies. The individual human is in relationship with each one of these at our own, corresponding level. This is also true at the community and cultural level, in which the collective energetic consciousness of the human community interacts with the energy field of place. Primal and indigenous cultures had a keen awareness of and a rich relationship with the spirit and consciousness of place, and took this into consideration above and beyond all other factors in directing the focus and activity of the community.

The consequence at a cultural level of having shifted our paradigm in relating to place as something having only a physical, material nature is apparent in the environmental crisis that surrounds us on all sides. Any amount of reducing consumption, recycling and re-using will not solve our problems – nothing less than a paradigm shift to reconnect with the spirit and consciousness of our environment will bring us back into right relationship. At an individual level, the consequence of “wrong relationship” with place is that of geopathic stress.

Geopathic stress is typically defined as prolonged, repeated exposure to damaging earth energies. Consequences include disease and dysfunction of a repeating or chronic nature, unresponsive to therapeutic intervention and typically showing up after a move to a new domestic or work location. Sleeping long and waking tired, and other dysfunctions of biological rhythms is typical. Geopathic stress is most easily identified and assessed through dowsing, kinesiology or vega analysis, and the energy fields causing it relate to various tangible and intangible elements in the earths structure, both physical and energetic. Essentially, earth energies are the “chi paths” or meridians of the earth’s energetic body – similar to those worked with by Traditional Chinese Medical practitioners in the practice of acupuncture. These planetary chi paths have gone by many names – they are dragons, they are spirit paths, they are song lines, they are energy leys or ley lines, they are the shamanic “lines of the world”. They also follow underground water courses, faults and fractures, and mineral and crystal seams. Energetically aware cultures have sought out power centers, where the earth’s energies are strongly focused, for spiritual practices including healing and divination. By contrast, they place their domestic sites where the dragons’ breath is sweet and gentle. Spending extended periods of time in the path of either strong or grumpy dragons creates stress and trauma to the equivalent energy body of the individual, with consequent imbalances developing in the mental, emotional and physical bodies. In addition to the direct effect of the earth’s energies on the human etheric body, place memory – mostly human psychic and emotional residue – impacts the human emotional body, and our higher spiritual bodies can be affected by spirit presences, both human and non-human that are place associated.

Healing and energy balancing can be directed towards place and environment in exactly the same way as towards an individual, and indeed many therapeutic techniques need little adaptation for use in working with landscape. What is mostly lacking is the awareness of this level of relationship. In growing back into this awareness, there are two cautionary considerations. Firstly, energy fields that are harmful to a person may allow other species to thrive. Fruiting trees and many domesticated animals are injuriously affected by the ‘yin chi” associated with underground water for example, perhaps the source of 85% or so of geopathic stress as it affects humans. Medicinal herbs, members of the nightshade family, burrowing animals, bees and insects and everything that lives in your compost heap simply adores such energy however. Geopathic stress is a condition of unaware relationship, of people placing themselves in what are for them adverse locations. It is certainly possible to change and balance such energies to render them harmless to humans, however if we do this on a planetary scale we will be creating desert conditions for many other species, with awful karmic consequences for ourselves. Balance, balance, balance. Secondly, it is important to be aware that while the spirit of place does not have the pro-active consciousness of free will granted to humans, it has vastly more psychic mass and inertia than we do individually. Healers are well aware of the potential for their own energies to become imbalanced or traumatized through interacting with the imbalances and traumas of their patients and clients. This potential is vastly greater when working with imbalance and trauma in the landscape, and collaborative efforts, such as Fountain Groups, where healing is directed into the landscape by groups sitting together in meditation with healing intent, are very valuable in offering support and increasing effectiveness. The practice of relating to and working with earth energies and the Spirit of Place is called geomancy – literally translating as “divination of the earth”. There are many ancient traditions of geomancy, including that of the Native American and the ancient Celt, the Greek and the Roman, the increasingly popularised Chinese tradition of Feng Shui, and the Hindu tradition of the Vastu Veda. All of these are codes of practice relating to their own culture and time period, and much can be learned by their study. Our challenge today is to reconnect, re-engage, and create a contemporary geomantic paradigm, based on the central, generic and universal principles, contemporary to our own culture, language and symbolism, vibrant, vital and accessible to all.

Have you ever noticed people who simply make you feel good by just looking at them?

Have you ever observed someone for the first time and knew there was something off with this person, even though that particular person never said a word to you? As more experiments are conducted within this field, we are finding more and more astonishing results.

For example, Russian professor Konstantin Korotkov found that upon death, the human aura will continue to change for approximately 72 hours after being pronounced clinically dead. Korotkov stated, “We are developing the idea that our consciousness is part of the material world and that with our consciousness we can directly influence our world.”

You can’t hide your aura

Everything you know and see can boil down to energy. Plants, trees and even inanimate objects such as gemstones, can exhibit an aura. Your aura is a body of energy generated around you. It is basically the world’s best detector of human emotion and can show the “real you” no matter how hard you try to hide it.

For example, I was at a conference a few years ago and noticed the aura of the woman who was taking publicity photos. Her aura was a dark red. I asked the woman I was with if she could see this photographers aura as well, and she confirmed the same color.I then said to the photographer, “Hi, how are you doing?” to which she responded how she was out late the previous night and was really tired today.

Her aura, however, said that she really didn’t want to be there that particular day.

Even without seeing her aura, one could sense her energy, which may be more apparent to empaths than to others. Perhaps empaths are more sensitive to the auric field?

Empaths and the auric field

Your aura reflects the energy that you are currently experiencing as well as your overall psyche and emotional state of being.

Empaths are affected by other people’s energies and have the innate ability to intuitively perceive and feel other people. While we all have this ability, some people are more in tune to it than others.

This, in turn, may help to explain how auras and energies can affect other people for what seems to be no apparent reason. For example, an empath will take on the energies of everyone, including the good, the bad and the ugly energies. A skilled empath will acknowledge them and will know how to discharge or deflect these energies while most people unknowingly absorb them.

Kirlian photography of the aura

Through Kirlian photography, the human aura can be photographed. The colors of your aura reflect the colors in the chakra system. The lower three chakras are red (base chakra), orange (sacral chakra) and yellow (solar plexus chakra) while the higher four are green (heart chakra), blue (throat chakra), indigo (third eye chakra) and violet (crown chakra). Kirlian photography is a collection of photographic techniques used to capture the phenomenon of electrical coronal discharges. It is named after Semyon Kirlian, who, in 1939 accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is connected to a high-voltage source, an image is produced on the photographic plate. The technique has been variously known as “electrography”, “electrophotography”, “corona discharge photography” (CDP), “bioelectrography”, “gas discharge visualization (GDV)”, “electrophotonic imaging (EPI)”, and, in Russian literature, “Kirlianography”.

How the color of your aura can help you

As mentioned, the aura follows the colors of your chakras and will give you an idea of where you are at and what you can do. Keep in mind that there are no “bad” aura colors because we can learn something from each color. If your aura is in the lower three chakras (red, orange or yellow) then chances are, you are undergoing physical plane experiences that relate to survival, sexual or emotional issues.

As incredible as it may sound, in 1967 – which, bear in mind, was still the height of the Cold War – British authorities made a secret approach to the highest echelons of the former Soviet Union’s military. It was an approach that revolved around nothing less than Unidentified Flying Objects. In fact, the British Government came straight to the point: they wished to clandestinely discuss the possibility of establishing a joint UK-Soviet UFO study-program. Sounds near-unbelievable? Yes, it does. But, it’s one hundred percent verifiable.

Thanks to the provisions of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), documentation has surfaced from the Defense Intelligence Agency which reveals at least significant parts of the story. According to the DIA: “In early 1967 (exact date believed to be 10 Nov) Moscow TV presented a program on Unidentified Flying Objects. On 12 Nov 67 a Reuters release in the U.K. (believe article was in Daily Telegraph) reported the TV program.”

The essence of both the Soviet television show and the Reuters story, noted the DIA, was that “…the Russians had recently set up a commission to study UFOs.” The chairman of the commission, the DIA learned, was a retired Soviet Air Force (SAF) Major General A.F. Stolyarov, a former Technical Services Officer. Not only that, the project had at its disposal no less than 18 astronomers and SAF officers and “200 observers.”

A couple of days after the TV production aired, the DIA learned, the Reuters correspondent paid Major General Stolyarov a visit. The general, recorded DIA personnel, “was very polite, confirmed the information about the commission, the 18 astronomers and SAF officers and the 200 observers. In addition, he said five positive sightings had been made.”

One week later, however, things had changed significantly, as the DIA’s files make very clear: “…the Reuters correspondent went back to see General Stolyarov. However, this time the correspondent could not get past the General’s secretary, [and] was politely but firmly told the General was no longer available for interview.”

But, then, there was a dramatic development in the story – and, probably, a wholly unforeseen development. The DIA uncovered information to the effect that, “…on 12 December 1967, the British Embassy was directed by London to further investigate the subject with a view to cooperating with the Russians in observation teams for UFOs.” There may have been a very good reason for the actions of the Brits.

Between the seven year-period of 1959 to 1966, documentation now declassified by the British Ministry of Defense reveals, British authorities received a combined total of 446 UFO reports. In 1967, alone, however, the MoD was inundated with no less than 362 reports – averaging at almost one report per day.

The DIA added that the Scientific Counselor of the British Embassy visited the Soviet Union’s State Committee for Science and Technology and inquired about two things: (a) the status and nature of the Soviet UFO commission and; (b) the possibility of ”British-Russian cooperation in observation of UFOs.” According to the DIA’s sources, “…the British counselor was politely received and the Commission was freely discussed. The British were told they would receive a reply to their request about cooperation.”

DIA records reveal that the Brits did not receive a reply from the Soviets and “did not pursue the subject.” But, the British Government did have its own opinions on the nature of the Soviet UFO program, however. The DIA documentation shows that, “The British Scientific Counselor believes that the original announcement of the work of the Commission on TV was an oversight on the part of the censors because the commission has not been reported or referred to anywhere else. Mr. [Censored] believes the Commission has not been disbanded, but will continue under cover. This information was sent to London.”

Intriguingly, the DIA records also show that the relevant data had been provided by a source that had “read confidential British files on this subject.” It is a pity that the DIA report – which was prepared by a Colonel Melvin J. Nielsen – did not expand upon the reference to these secret documents of the British. Nevertheless, that the British Government chose to make a stealthy approach to the Soviets – and directly in the wake of a significant wave of UFO activity in the skies of the UK – is more than notable. It suggests an undercurrent of concern and unease within certain British-based corridors of power.

Even though the Soviets chose not to take matters further with the Brits (and vice-versa), the very fact that the latter made the approach – at all – is notable. Indeed, in 1991, I was informed in writing by the British Ministry of Defense that, with regard to UFOs, ”…we do not co-operate with other Governments on this subject.” That stance, however, did not seemingly prevent British authorities from at least attempting to work with the Soviets on the UFO problem – and practically a quarter of a century before I was assured there was no such cooperation at all!